CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Returning to Black Hill both a conquering hero and a failure of a hunter, Piper collected on Blondie’s bounty by tossing his severed head, which had long since cooled down to the appearance of a grisly, fur-covered amber statue, onto the desk of Penelope Hickory. Her achievement in taking out such a large liability earned her an audience with the board members, and subsequently a sizable raise. And though in that moment she was tempted to try and spark an all out war against the ten escapees, she simply couldn’t bring herself to admit to her superiors that the bounty was still technically active. Instead, through gritted teeth, she told a little white lie to save face— their quarry had fallen down into the old Gutter’s Glade Mine crevasse after they had fled into it. And, as it turns out, the way down had completely sunken in, rendering the bodies completely irretrievable. Unless they were to send a search and retrieve operation up into the equivalent of enemy territory, there was no chance in hell to bring those damned miners to corporate justice. And sure, this sentiment brings upon some disappointed sighs and annoyed grunts from her superiors, it’s nothing the money she makes didn’t almost immediately dampen. By that point, she earned equal to the amount of Blondie’s salary, which is enough to keep her and Janet afloat so long as she’s on the grind. So, in a way, she walked out of that board room with a little extra wisdom. Battles you can’t win now were battles you might as well not fight, especially if you could wrangle up some cash in the process.
Piper spends the rest of her days continuing Blondie’s deadly legacy. She worked directly for the board members of Shepherd Gemstone as their right hand (with her squad of mercenaries being their left, no matter how much she despised it), lived happily with Janet and her children, and generally speaking, made the most of her corporately-funded adventures. Even if it means becoming more familiar with death than she ever had been before.
Harry Gilroy, in a similar vein, moved up on the Shepherd Gemstone ladder for a period of time post-success of Blondie’s post-mortem execution, managing the operations of multiple mining outposts across a few square miles— Smokestone, of course, included. Thanks to a couple smart foreman hires and the corporate suppression of any and all magical incidents in his jurisdictions (his paper shredder was consistently the fullest “section” of his office), he kept profits high enough for long enough for his superiors to take notice. He even was held in higher esteem than Hickory at the peak of his internal glory, something he absolutely dragged her through the mud over. Eventually, however, Gilroy’s head becomes a bit too big for his shoulders. He’s fired directly from the Board after news of an unprecedented number of magical afflictions, alongside a sizable number of employee uprisings in his jurisdictions, breaks to the overhead. In a drunken stupor, he blames everyone but himself, storms out of the Shepherd Gemstone HQ and pisses on their front lawn, where he is then arrested for public indecency. He becomes a washed up, former high-roller in his neighborhood, rumoured to have taxidermied Blondie’s head and hung it up above a fireplace somewhere private. He spends his hoard of blood money on expensive booze, golfing trips, and renovating his home in an attempt to gather the attention of the single women in his community. Thus, he is cast out from the one thing he knows, rich and bitter.
Though Honeysett is idyllic as it is, everyones’ plans eventually send them out of the small town, with Pickman’s Hope being far and wide the most popular ending destination.
Azariah and Roxanne leave first, planning to aid with any reconstruction that needs doing (though there wouldn’t be much by the time they get there, seeing as how the town is known for its building expertise). They instead get involved with Samson’s doings around town, organizing the unions for work and acting as the occasional carrier of goodwill to neighboring towns. It ends up being a challenging occupation, especially since they have to compete diplomatically with corporations looking to take jobs from them and their people, but Azariah’s wit usually helps bring home the bacon, and Roxanne’s organizational skills helps make sure they can eat it, too. Pickman’s Hope sees a steady increase in cash flow, and it’s not long before the couple have their own home built, courtesy of the town, with their own garden and everything.
When they’re not working, they spend their time together indulging in the few, but substantial pleasures around the town; and, as everyone else trickles in, with them as well, acting as the guides they always have whenever something goes wrong. It’s not uncommon to find them filling the same role that Samson does, being everyone’s uncle or aunt and helping them paint fences, weed gardens, or settle minor disputes in bars. And though Azariah initially was tested by some of the rowdier locals about his capabilities (everyone knows Samson’s got it in him to stop scuffles, but this new Hare? and at his age?), but folks quickly realized that there’s to be no funny business with him around. What’s more, the rumour began floating around that Azariah liked the fighting— there was something about his eyes during the days when drunks would challenge him that burned those events into the memories of the sober. And, of course, if Roxanne was around in the case of these events, she was wicked accurate with her cane when she had it (and if she didn’t, you’d best believe she was going to pick up anything around and bludgeon your sorry ass with it), able to knock the buzz out of the most uppity of union workers.
Judith and Leon are next to leave, having decided that the best thing for them to do is just jump into a new life, leaving the adventuring business they’d been drafted into completely behind them. That means pursuing new business, the kind that would be calm, peaceful, and hopefully complimentary toward the skills that they’ve been building up. After a day or two of thinking while on the road, they decide to open a flower shop.
Judith runs the economic end of the store, taking back the person she once was from the grips of an angry, bitter, corporate version of herself, by indulging in the simple, sweet pleasures of accounting. And it doesn’t take long for her to take to the front desk as well, committing to memory prices and tax ratios, and developing pricing strategies for larger orders such as weddings, feasts, or public events. Every flower, down to the petal, she teaches herself how to price. As the days go by, she feels herself softening more naturally in the presence of customers. Sure, she has a very low tolerance for bullshit, and she’s none too happy when folks take a long time at the counter thanks to their own incompetence, but she absorbs that annoyance with ease, instead of letting it stew in her system. It’s amazing what not letting grudges overwhelm your emotional system can do for your mental well-being! At some point, she considers writing a book about her physical and emotional experiences having escaped from an exploitative mining company, but in a way, she figures that she should wait until she’s not busy with numbers before trying to work some words.
Leon ends up the gardener, and though he’s only blessed with a literally green thumb and not a metaphorical one, a little help from the locals helps him to blossom into quite the flower expert. Arranging, however, is where he ends up finding out his talent is. His touch with colours is subtle, yet when the final piece has been completed, results in patterns that seem to shine the same way a polished gemstone would. It doesn’t take long for him to experiment with complex fragrance combinations as well, though, it doesn’t take off the way that he’d hoped. Instead, he finds himself satisfied with the scent of a particular flower, known as the Cinnamon Cup Rose, as it lets him laugh without coughing up a lung.
Olive and Cherry move down simultaneously, and for a short period of time end up living together in a single-level on the outskirts of town. It doesn’t last long however, as Olive gets tired of the noise from his mechanical work at all hours of the day and moves closer into the town square, where she instead gets to listen to the sounds of the sidewalks.
Olive’s reasoning for leaving what is ostensibly a fangirl’s fantasy villa was that she felt as though the power she was given by the Mountain Thing wouldn’t quite get used to its fullest potential if all she did was sit around Honeysett, which was filled to the brim with folks who could more than handle themselves. The burning inside pushed her toward humanitarian work, and so, she decided to learn the art of field medic-work from Roxanne. She slowly worked her way through the skills presented to her, at first getting stuck on the hurdle of being covered with blood (as that sort of thing is terrible to get out of feathers), but working through anxiety after anxiety throughout the years. Roxanne wasn’t the easiest teacher to work with but she’s definitely a thorough one, and with the incredible diversity of Pickman’s Hope and beyond, there’s a lot for Olive to learn, all while keeping track of her own condition as best she could— with the occasional check-up on her old pals.
By the time she’s learned everything that Roxanne has to teach her, she’s already been working at the local emergency response team, and has more than a few encounters under her belt where her power, and her medical knowledge, has come in handy. There were more than a few times where she saved a life by means of skilled hands and focused eyes, be it removing a bullet or deflecting one, and in time she became well-known enough among such circles to be offered permanent positions in adventuring companies and collectives, parties of many sizes and skills asking if she’d become their in-house medic. The answer she gave them, of course, was a “no,” though she was more than happy to patch them up if she was nearby, and was more than eager to pass her knowledge onto others in the field.
Cherry, on the other hand, realized that it probably wouldn’t be good for him to stick around his dads’ place for much longer. Though they love him dearly, they don’t love the amount of noise that his work and main hobby brings, so he picks up a job at the local mechanics’ Union in Pickman’s Hope and gets his hands dirty. It doesn’t take long for him to be promoted from a shelf-stocker to someone who actually works on vehicles, and his propensity for understanding models that nobody else had seen before turns him into the “I don’t know, ask him” guy for anyone in the know about cars, a label he happily upholds. With the blessing of Samson, Cherry also gets to work on establishing a racing club there in town, working to create a new breed of backwood valley-folk racers that can compete with even the biggest sponsors further out west. It’s another feather in the town’s cap; it’s a new and fresh way for folks to compete among themselves, all while attracting eyes. Aside from that, it means yearly events, and that’s just plain good for local morale.
Brie, of course, leaves last, having to hitch a ride to Pickman’s Hope to pick up her car, to then drive back north of Honeysett to meet up with her girlfriend. After months of being gone and with hardly any money left to her name, she treats her to a fancy dinner to drop the news about how the quarry with Shepherd Gemstone fell through, that she’s realized things about the line of work she’s in that she doesn’t like, and that she’s nearly been killed multiple times over the time she’s been gone (and that she’d like to not repeat this experience ever again). And so, after much talk over a couple glasses of brandy, a sizeable bill for the pork chops they ordered, and a few days to mull everything over, they decide to move down to Pickman’s Hope, where Brie not only knows people, but also where she could get a job doing something less actively perilous. And a job she did get after a brief talk with Samson— she now works as a local detective slash investigator, helping to suss out corporate interests and potential moles from Shepherd from the town, as the discovery of Hieronymus T. Thistle’s treachery was something of a wake up call for the union head. Though it’s not entirely out of the line of fire, it puts her in a spot where she feels truly confident that the work she’s doing is for the greater good. And, of course, the constant reassurance from her peers helps quite a bit.
Jules, Lucille, and Meat all realize that there’s something binding the three of them together, and that thing is their lack of ability to settle down in the place they’ve come to be so fond of. Pickman’s Hope is a no-go for them, because as much as they’d like to go domestic, Jules and Meat are both being hunted by the Carnevale, and Lucille figures that someone like her would be better off sorting out her issues on the road, rather than cooped up in a house somewhere. So, they buy a car from Pickman’s Hope, say goodbye to everyone (with many tears being shed on behalf of Meat having to leave so soon from Brie and Roxanne), and they set out west for new horizons.
And though they’re not the newest of horizons, they certainly did find a new-er climate to work in. The three of them, collectively, set out as another independent contractor group, doing odd jobs here and there and taking advantage of Meat’s Notus powers to get them done quickly and efficiently. Their plans are to make as much money as they can so that way they can retire early and maybe set something similar to Honeysett up (or find someplace like it that already exists, build a place in the neighborhood, and live the good life). The process of getting there however, has only just begun.
It’s getting into the evening hours, and the first flakes of winter are beginning to collect on the lawn of Piper’s residence. Tanner is crowing about how much snow he thinks they’re going to get, Madrone has dug her nose into a book to avoid the walking annoyance that is her kid brother, and Janet has found a cozy spot right up against Piper on the sofa, their fireplace crackling softly.
After taking a sip of her tea, Janet stands up from her spot, walks around the couch, picks up a wrapped box, and places it on Piper’s lap. “Go on. Open it,” she coos.
“Aw, honey. You shouldn’t have.” Piper replies, ripping into the paper.
It’s a box. A box from the Quilting Club with her name on it, to be precise. And whatever’s in the box is heavy, heavier than the heaviest dumbbell Janet works out with for her calisthenics, anyways.
And when she opens it, it’s as though she’s cracking open a treasure chest of sparkling gold doubloons. It’s a replica of Blondie’s old pistol, the hand cannon that turns peoples’ heads into leaky cans of soup. In the glow of her awe, she nearly forgets to shoo away the kids, who are crowding around the “cool gun that Piper got” (as her children are still getting acclimated to calling her “mom”). Its weight, its design, its finish, all of it is pristine and new and exactly how she remembers it. And now it's hers. The final piece is hers.
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Azariah and Meat both stand a little straighter as a glowing claw knuckles its way through what stray rubble dared to stand in Blondie’s now much, much more open path; without skipping a beat the beast has stepped over the still collapsed android, and Meat barely processes the way that the other claw is moving before their own hand darts up to block a flaming rock before it can strike the Hare dead in the chest.
The fire dissipates with a low whine like a dog at heel, but the rock itself still stings Meat’s palm, causing them to drop it and direct their gaze again to Blondie, who’s closing the distance in hefty, thudding bounds.
“Runnin’ might be a pretty good idea, actually,” Azariah mumbles as he raises his arms, breath steadying in his throat. “Leave it to a friend of hers to talk me into somethin’ sensible when it’s too late.”
Meat swings low, ducking and moving in half-squatted to strike Blondie’s abdomen with both hands, and like back in Fusillade at the moment of contact there’s a small concussive blast— strong enough to blow Meat’s hands back and to halt Blondie’s advance for that brief second.
“That supposed to stop me?” Blondie grins all fire and brimstone until over Meat’s shoulder comes Azariah, striking him in the muzzle with a hard elbow.
The Hare practically flies through the air, moving just a smidge faster than Blondie’s eyes can follow, leading the Werewolf to spin and swing his arms in an attempt to grab him. What he grabs instead is a metal man, as Azariah had actually ducked between the now standing Jack’s legs and rolled to the side.
Meat turns their own attention to the tumbling ball of speed nearby and immediately sets to join them in what looks like a retreat, as Azariah hops back onto his own two feet, so by the time Blondie’s getting ready to deal with his new dance partner the other two are already hoofing it down the tunnel and away from the lot.
“You son of a bitch,” Blondie snarls before tensing his shoulders and headbutting Jack— receiving a solid thump to his own head in turn, a resounding sound of skull to steel, and nothing less than what might constitute several concussions’ worth of blunt force trauma right between the eyes.
Jack, however, blinks. “Huh, usually people knock themselves out when they try that.” Thick metal fingers dig into the burnt and glowing arms of the werewolf, and with a mechanical twist and the growl of some form of internal engine, Jack shoves Blondie hard against the nearby wall. There the two break, just in time for Jack to get into form, raising his arms with his fists up, tucking his head down and beginning to step closer, though he’s not stepping lightly. Jack’s not a dodger, he’s a blocker, a pulverizer. “Ready to get your bell rung, sir?”
“I’m gonna to melt your sorry metal ass to slag,” Blondie snarls back. Above and around them the ground shakes as Blondie tenses and then darts forward, slamming Jack with his forearm and dragging the robot with him as he powers through the tunnel, each step an earthquake, each bound of each leg a tremble in the ceiling.
Jack’s got weight and power but unfortunately he’s a bit top-heavy, and while his stance is grounded as it can get short of just lying on the floor his opponent’s able to half-lift him with velocity. The densely muscled forearm, brimming with heat and power, thrums and glows against the tin man’s throat. Above him, the glow grows more intense— as it begins growing inside of Blondie’s mouth.
Down the cave hall, down the tunnel, Azariah’s had to stop for another breather as Meat paces. “Don’t be so hasty,” he mumbles. “I’m sure that pup’s got his hands full for a minute.”
“We have to get going, now, or we might not be able to catch up.”
“You kids these days, always doin’ somethin’. Take a minute to breathe, if you have to. That count as offensive? Pardon if it is, didn’t mean anythin’ by it. Even if they get out before us, I’m sure we can—”
From the bend the two had just gone around some moments before bursts Blondie, one arm holding up Jack and the other batting at the robot’s arms, which were flailing in an attempt to close the now near blindingly bright glow lingering in his maw. Azariah doesn’t finish his sentence as he stands to move in, but Meat stops him short there too.
The two only barely manage to toss themselves out of the way and behind a rocky outcropping as Blondie and Jack fly like a missile into the wall where they had been standing just that second previous, sending a sickening crack up to the ceiling from where the android was slammed. It winds its way like a snake up from the point of contact and spider-webs from the rounded corner where wall becomes ceiling, tossing down rubble as the scuffle of their feet tosses up dust.
To their right, Meat and Azariah both see a dark shape hiding behind a similar set of jutting rocks, rapidly loading a weapon and mumbling to herself.
Nancy’s swapped between flechettes and buckshot and God knows what by this point but she’s more than half certain none of them are going to punch a hole in the beast’s hide, not when she’s been unable to even smell a drop of blood or exposed flesh that isn’t charred. “Lacking sufficient ordinance to handle larger quarry— should’ve requisitioned something back in town. Stupid backwater, lacks a proper armory. Need something bigger, stronger, can only knock him around with this…”
Unable to shake Blondie off again, Jack’s been staring down the steadily increasing glow that now threatens to blind him, a vivid red light so searing that it burns his mechanical retinas, but he can’t look away. His fingers can’t find purchase wherever they ply and his kicks are doing nothing; before him lies death, and it’s brighter than he ever imagined. Inside his body his mechanical organs scream past their proper limits, pushing harder, harder, heating up, even Blondie can hear them now.
He blinks, but it’s not enough of an opening for Jack. This is it; this is the part where he overclocks himself to critical just to make sure he isn’t going out alone. It’s going to be bright, furious, glorious—
A dark shape flies from behind the rocks and screams down between the two’s legs, and before either of them process what it is, a shotgun’s shadow blocks the intense red light bathing Jack as the barrel of Lieutenant Nancy’s weapon is wedged up against the lower jaw of the werewolf. Two combustions follow, the firing of her shotgun directly into Blondie’s lower jaw, shutting it hard, and then Blondie’s slow-build pressure cooker of pain popping like a highly explosive bubble inside of his mouth. From between his fangs and through his nostrils a monstrous blossom of red flame and black smoke bursts, knocking him backwards and onto his ass as it tosses Jack the opposite way— all while it punches Nancy into the ground, all the force coming vertically.
Azariah and Meat are a good way down the tunnel again, this time avoiding any stops so that they won’t be caught up to, when there’s a loud explosion down the way behind them.
“Poor guy,” Azariah mumbles. “Robot never stood a chance.”
Meat’s head tilts as they jog just beside him. “Why assume he lost? That could’ve been a… I don’t know, a second death explosion.”
“Then the poor guy’s still dead even if he won. Too bad, I’m sure he would’ve been fun to run from too.” A wheezy, raspy laugh escapes him to punctuate the joke, and though he’s keeping pace it’s becoming very evident to Meat that his bones are creaking and his voice is hoarse.
“We might not be able to catch up,” Meat says, rubbing the back of their neck. “Roxanne’s going to kill us if that robot doesn’t.”
Azariah cracks his knuckles, then his neck for good measure. “Don’t you worry about us catchin’ up. Much as I would like to turn back and finish up my round three, even with these powers I’m no spring coney. Ain’t that just a stick in the craw?”
“I can’t believe you both talk like this,” Meat mumbles. “Alright, so how’re we— hey— no!” It’s too late. Azariah’s already swept the Notus off their feet and into his arms, though he struggles to stay standing proper straight with the weight.
“Nowdon’tyouworrynoneaboutthisit’sgonnabefine,” is the near unintelligible string of words that hits Meat, right as it feels like the world starts vibrating and, despite the weight, Azariah’s blitzing down the tunnel.
Jack’s the first back up and he can feel some of his clothes have started burning, at least whatever’s not melting to his metal hide. “Nancy? Status report, Nancy, talk to me— I can’t see Blondie.” He rubs his eyes, then from his pocket withdraws a small glass cleaning rag to clear them off properly. When his vision sharpens, he spots her, a dark spot on the ground, crumpled and curled up.
Crouching beside her he moves to get at her helmet, but first he receives a smack on the wrist as she attempts to get up on her own, the arm beneath her still cradling the shotgun. Secondly, he takes a wolfy claw to the side of the head and he gets kicked out of the way by Blondie, who by this point has been covered in soot so black that the only vestiges of his formerly white fur are lingering around his legs and shoulders. A quick wipe with Jack’s rag cleans off a bit of his maw and face, but for the most part it’s like he’s been dunked in ink and then manhandled by a washcloth.
Blondie’s wide chest rises and falls as he takes breaths of his own volition, clearing out more smoke and ash from his throat before saying, “Still think this is a fine fight, copper cock? Where’s your boss, huh? What’re you getting paid?”
“Not enough, I’ll tell you that much.” Jack stands again, getting his fists ready and beginning to circle, taking an opposite direction to Blondie, who’s walking in a slow arc around. On the ground, Nancy’s coughing up smoke through her mask, and now that she’s raising her head, half of the helmet’s been blown clear off and the eye beneath looks partially blind. Jack continues, “But as much as I’d like to talk rates with you, I know it’s still better than what I’d get on a dead man’s payroll.”
Calling him a dead man earns nothing but fury from Blondie, garnering a loud and unenthusiastic growl before he tosses himself at Jack again, but this time the robot’s prepared. As The first big, furry arm lands a swinging blow, Jack shoots out both hands to snatch. The first clamps hard on Blondie’s wrist swinging toward him, the other darts to Blondie’s throat to preempt any would-be fireballs while he can still reach it. In the meanwhile, Blondie’s other, still free claw has begun its arc toward Jack's head— when another gunshot rings out and Blondie screams, half-choked, over a newfound pain in his elbow.
Suddenly, something else is against his throat too. Against his shoulder blades are knees, pressing hard as the pipe barrel of Nancy’s shotgun is being pulled back the opposite way; Nancy, glaring like a devil, is panting and snarling over the wolf’s head. “I am not dying to some backwoods forest hick fuck!” She screams, and as Blondie digs his claws into her back with an awkward twist of his body she bites clear through her mask, revealing her snaggled fangs just before she sinks them into the side of his head, thrashing like a wild animal.
She’s screaming, her wound is cauterizing as soon as it’s made, Jack’s trying to shake Blondie’s throat hard enough to snap the werewolf’s spine if he can, and here’s Blondie halfway having a test of strength with the robot and trying to pull the vampire off of his head. All are screaming, thrashing, a mass of hateful limbs and weaponry, torn and burnt and bleeding, and they’re moving, tumbling, they begin twirling and then start spinning and now they’re a ball of hate on the floor.
A particularly forceful kick from Blondie brings them back to the wall he’d slammed Jack into, hoping to bust him against it so he can get out of the hold and get at Nancy, but the robot doesn’t give— the wall, however, does, sending the three into a freefall.
Luckily for Nancy and not so luckily for Jack, they land on top of Jack, with Nancy still on top of Blondie. Especially lucky for Blondie, Jack loses his grip with the fall and in that moment of weakness, the Wolf breaks the embrace and hucks Jack against the far wall of the chamber, a good several meters, before doing the same to Nancy with a screaming roar.
The two Mercs stand and exchange quick glances, eyes darting to the walls, the ceiling, the strangely smooth and untested environment, before Nancy growls. “Let’s get this done, soldier.”
“One of those kitschy military types. You must be from a real shithole.” Blondie narrows his eyes at them, his glow growing more intense as he gathers a fireball in each hand.
Jack, out of all of them, hasn’t made any attempt to intimidate or even assert himself. Instead of some one-liner hoping to end the fight before it starts, he just points behind Blondie and asks, “Is he supposed to have two shadows? Why’s the other one a lot bigger than him?”
Though it’s taken him a while to get the position right, what with the driving skills of Piper being akin to that of a joy-riding teenager and Sundae’s revolver ringing off rounds loud enough to punch holes in his ear drums, Kranner has managed to wedge himself comfortably onto both the pseudo-middle seat, as well as the floor of the back half of the sedan. His rifle rests comfortably in his shoulder and pokes out between the two front seats, with his arms punched against the side cushions to keep himself stable as he lines up his first shot. And there’s plenty of targets to choose from in the bed of the truck they’re following.
There’s that black haired woman and an Orc. There’s that odd-looking lady with the scarf around her mouth. There’s a mousy-looking woman, one who keeps getting particularly nasty looks from Piper. And then, there’s the Owl, who is the only person standing up in the bed. She’s got a terribly anxious look on her face, and to be frank, Kranner thinks that it’d be lovely to try and hit someone behind her for effect. So, he lines up a lovely headshot on the one that his boss doesn’t seem to like. All it takes now is a light trigger pull—
“Kranner, would you take the fucking shot already? You’re burning time!” Piper yells, turning to face him briefly with a grimace.
“Gettin’ comfortable’s hard to do when you’re stuffed into a dead man’s vehicle!” he replies, setting his finger against the trigger guard. “You want them dead, Boss?! I’ve gotta take my damn time!”
“Yeah, sure. Sundae’s been shooting this entire goddamn time, old man. You better get your ass into gear.”
Sundae empties the revolver’s chamber, and sticks her body back in through the window. “I haven’t hit anything yet,” she comments. “But who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky in another six.”
Piper’s hands audibly squeak with sweat as she grips the steering wheel. “Where the FUCK have you been aiming?”
“At them, boss. I’ve never shot out the side of a car before. It’s taken some getting used to. I think I got close a couple times, though.”
“Are you telling me that NEITHER of you fucking imbeciles have done a SINGLE THING since Jack’s split off from us?!” she screams. Both of them notice the venom begin to sputter from the top of her mouth onto the padded car seat. It steams lightly as it corrodes the material. “FINE! Fine. Take your fucking time, just make sure that your shots count. We are not going back. I’ve come too fucking far.”
“Good idea, boss,” Sundae responds. She quickly reloads her revolver, sticks her body back out the car window, and continues to fire at almost absolutely nothing— albeit, with longer intervals between the shots.
Her lackadaisical ass had better be decent in a fight, ‘cause I don’t have the patience for a fucking slacker on my team right now, Piper thinks to herself. Rolling down her own window, she spits out a small mouthful of venom. And that old man had better take a shot soon, or I’m gonna be shoving his rifle down that fucked up eye socket of his.
Cherry’s focus is nigh unbreakable, even with the presence of consistent gunshots from behind him. There has never been a moment in his life where his driving has meant more to everyone else than it has to him, and so, not even the threat of being hit is deterring him from keeping his posture upright with both hands on the wheel.
Roxanne and Jules, on the other hand, have slumped down into their seats in the cabin, and are attempting to give rally-style navigation directions to Cherry from a map that’s about as long as the cabin, floor to ceiling. Roxanne has tasked herself with keeping an approximation of where they are on the map by tracing her finger along the route, while Jules has taken to calling out the upcoming corners and turns whenever appropriate. And, of course, this is all being done in the dimly lit cab of the truck, whose overhead lights have not been replaced in years.
“Medium right,” the Vampire says, jerking his thumb in that direction. “Then, light left. I think.”
“Got it,” Cherry responds, beginning to brake the take the turn, as told, before the shine from his headlights can even illuminate the back wall of the junction.
“Jules, could you tell me what that is on the map?” Roxanne asks, pointing at what looks to be an absolutely massive depression relatively far down the road.
He widens his eyes. “Kinda looks like a pit. Maybe. Why?” And though there’s plenty of other landmarks on the map of similarly massive size, this one puzzles him for but a moment before he solves it. He traces the path back to where Roxanne has kept track of their location, and realizes that the area in question cuts between where they are now, and where they want to head, which is an exit marked in red ink “Near Honeysett”. “Holy shit,” he says.
“What’s next?” Cherry asks, having clearly been too focused to realize what’s going on.
“Hard right, and a ravine crossing in the next twenty turns.”
“Wait, what?”
In the bed of the car, everyone is slightly surprised that the person leaning out the side window hasn’t hit anything, or anyone, other than the cavern walls yet. Even Olive, who has taken to standing up to make herself a target (for the sake of blocking it with her power, though there’s a massive doubt in her mind that she’ll be fast enough (again) to react to a bullet), is a little perplexed by this.
Though, as she gets bored of watching the Elf shoot everywhere but the truck, Olive turns to the cabin, where she sees an awfully mean looking blonde woman who seems to keep having to spit out the window (why would she be packing a lip at a time like this?), and, in the backseat, a glass man with a rifle.
Now, again, something strikes Olive as odd. She traces the sight of the woman driving, and finds it to bounce between the truck bed itself, her, and everyone else, but primarily Brie, who stares right back. This isn’t too odd, as having heard Brie’s story about getting brained by the woman, it would make sense that she’d have a vendetta. And that Brie would be rightfully afraid of her.
But, the glass man with the rifle. Why would he be aiming out the front windshield? And more importantly, where are his sightlines aimed? She peers at the front of the barrel, and realizes that it couldn’t be at herself. It’d be much more clear, then. No, he’s aiming at someone else. And it’s nobody behind her (Lucille), and nobody to the left (Judith and Leon).
The front windshield of the following car shatters inward with the thundercrack of the sniper’s rifle, and in a flash, there’s a metallic “tink”, followed by the crumble of rock. Olive opens her eyes to find that she’s got a feathered hand in front of Brie’s head. And her hand is unharmed, albeit a little sore.
That damned bird. That shot had been perfect. It would have been the cleanest kill this place would have ever seen. It’s an insult to the profession that something as absolutely absurd as a bullet-proof Owl would decide to poke her forsaken beak into the path of this art.
Kranner’s fuming. A series of complications flash through his mind as Olive in the truck bed far ahead continues to move and thrust out limbs, having taken up Meat’s former position near the edge so as to swat munitions fire from the air with overanxious precision. Kranner’s eyes focus a bit more, and he drinks in the details. There’s always a hole in the armor, assuredly. Everyone makes a mistake at a time like this, even the ones who live for it.
Each of Sundae’s bullets get blocked if they dare to soar nearby any of them, but there’s something particular about the way Olive’s moving. The glassy bristle of his jaw rubs up against the mask as it comes to him in small bits and pieces, as though every blocked bullet itself is a part of a puzzle: she’s blocking killshots, whether she intends to entirely or not. Tracing their trajectories might be difficult for someone of a lesser caliber, but Kranner’s on top of his game.
That’s it, then. Can’t shoot to kill or she’ll manage to take the bullet, no matter who it’s aimed at. It’s a laudable performance but ultimately Kranner’s not interested in giving applause to competition or quarry, so her award is going to be something very special indeed as, ignoring the sounds of Piper and Sundae hissing like serpents at one another, he lines up his shot through the windshield, focusing on the bird’s leg.
Olive’s managed to puff out her feathers and swing her arms with a combination of protective knowledge of any vaguely humanoid anatomy and pure instinct, owlish eyesight providing her with a near perfect passive tracking of each gun barrel in the car behind them. Behind her, Judith and Leon are huddled together, the Orc’s arms wrapped around the werewolf, and off to either side she’s flanked by Brie and Lucille— the former’s been shooting, but none of her shots have landed anywhere but the plating, and the latter’s already run out of throwing knives.
Another heavy revolver round bounces off of her arm, and for the briefest second she turns her head without turning her body to face Judith and Leon, saying, “I don’t think I can keep this up for much longer! I’m runnin’ out of steam, somebody think—”
CRACK. Olive tumbles to the floor of the truck bed, half slumping and flailing, only avoiding death by cave floor and car tires as Brie and Lucille both immediately grab her and pull her back toward themselves, right into Judith and Leon, whose eyes widen.
“Okay! Thinking of something, thinking, uh, Brie give me your gun,” Judith babbles out, retreating from Leon’s arms only to be handed the semi-automatic. Well, she snatches it from out of Brie’s hand after the woman reloads, but once she has it she hands it to Leon, whom she presses up against. “This is going to be rough.”
One hand holding the gun, the other arm around Judith again, Leon glances between his girlfriend and the two others in the bed of the truck with a sigh. “Azariah’s been a bad influence. What is this, Plan D? I know it’s low on the list.”
“Would you care to explain to the rest of us?” Brie’s eyes narrow, but she’s plenty busy trying to keep Olive steady as she struggles with the pain. Down by her leg, Lucille’s already bandaging up the wound, repeating small battlefield platitudes about strength and pain.
“Don’t need to,” he says. “If it fails, maybe the truck’ll start going faster with less weight. Jump.”
Kranner’s in the midst of getting a second shot lined up— he’s taking aim at that Orc’s shoulder, hoping to put a round right in the muscle, compromise the whole damned thing— when the target and his little friend disappear into thin air. It’s as much a surprise to the two women still up in the truck bed as it is to him, and his ears tell him that while Piper’s still getting mad and Sundae’s still having a time, neither actually notice it due to their focuses being primarily on the disabling of the truck itself.
The backseat bumps awkwardly and the car sinks a solid chunk, almost enough to scrape the undercarriage against the stone floor of the tunnel, and though it’s already a bumpy ride Kranner knows that such a sound isn’t supposed to come with the sound of the upholstery getting rubbed on by denim or skin. To most the proposition’s absurd, but he’s been in this business for far too long to take chances. His experience isn’t enough to make up for sheer, unaccounted for surprise, that secret weapon of many a victor.
He swivels and takes aim, but there’s nothing there except a depression in the seat, like somebody is there but they just can’t be seen. These briefest of seconds of searching are just long enough. A series of muzzle flares and gunshots go off, a full semi-automatic pistol magazine’s worth of bullets are sent through the air and straight into his face, neck, and chest, without any of his professional finesse or precision. Each bullet finds a home somewhere inside Kranner, singing through glass and blood, spraying this mysterious wraith— wraiths, the blood paints two figures— and revealing them in the back of the car.
Judith, a bout of anxiety and fear taking hold after having to just mentally calculate the trajectory of a jump like that going from a moving vehicle to another, far more enclosed moving vehicle, and having watched her boyfriend just pump something like eight to ten rounds into a man she’d never met, kicks a leg out and strikes Kranner hard in the head with wolfish strength, cracking the helmet and the man’s head. This also has the effect of busting the backdoor open, sending the corpse tumbling out behind the lot of them, rifle having fallen into the floorboards.
Leon lets out a rasping cough, before, bloodied and invisible, he awkwardly kisses the side of her head.
This is right about the time when Sundae’s turned her attention back from the quarry ahead and realizes Kranner’s gone, and that those gunshots were not, in fact, the man going wild with his rifle. It had all the wrong timbre for a sniper, and the wrong rhythm for a trained professional.
When she finds two bloody half-shapes in the back of the car she wastes not even a second leveling her revolver and attempting to empty the full set. However, by the time she’s pulled the hammer back twice the two shapes are gone again, with no sign of truly being there anymore. She almost puts a third into the seat for good measure before Piper raises one arm from the steering wheel to punch Sundae in the side of her head, screaming, “Get back to shooting those freaks you fucking idiot.”
Judith and Leon are back in the truck bed again, splattered with blood but, for the most part, almost entirely unharmed. All that said, Judith is halfway to transforming with the intensity of it all, fangs starting to get a little big for her mouth and eyes getting a bit greener than Leon knows them to be on a good night, so the semiauto is passed back to its owner to be reloaded and returned to proper, trained firing as Leon focuses on calming the werewolf back down, strong arms squeezing around her, lips to her temple.
Lucille and Olive would each be amused, as might be Brie in a less forthright fashion, but the other three are swiftly refocused. Olive isn’t on her feet anymore, but she is up on her knees, with Lucille acting as a support behind her, the two attempting to go back to a sort of less immediately effective version of the Owl’s methods moments ago now that the Sniper’s gone.
“Turning invisible and teleporting were not in the files,” Brie says simply, leveling a shot at Piper, though it banks off of the frame of the car. “I think I am very, very glad to be on your side now.”
“You should’ve seen her wolf out back in Kiln, knocked some former friends of mine clear to the horizon,” Lucille teases. “That rock stuff’s really doing a number on you guys, huh? At least it’s useful.”
Olive lets out something shrill like a battlecry, but the enthusiasm’s too pleasant for that. It’s more like an exclamation of happy surprise, the sort one might make when presented with that oft-requested puppy after coming home from school, or, in this instance, spotting something very, very good.
Leon lifts his head from the tangle of Judith’s hair to ask, in unison with her, “What is it?”
To which the response is, “Azariah! It’s Azariah!”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
The sound of the fuel depot exploding is absolutely deafening, and it sends shrapnel of all sizes like a shower of knives into everything in the blast radius. The biofuel that the entire western world runs on, while highly efficient and mostly clean-burning when processed by modern, western engines, is incredibly volatile when combusted while exposed to air. A smoke stack begins to reach high above the treeline, and as the fires begin to spread, Blondie stands for a moment to admire his work. The burning, tickling feeling in the back of his brain feeds him a steady stream of serotonin for every second he takes with his eyes on the fireball. The scene isn’t even particularly beautiful to him— it’s an explosion, and nobody he knows is even in it. Sunsets look better on the regular than this. That magnetizing, intoxicating feeling is the important bit, and the only way he’d be pulled away from it is if the fire brigade showed up unexpectedly, hooked up their hose, and shocked him out of it with a blast of water to the small of his back.
Of course, in that instance, his first instinct is to half-howl and begin sprinting away, the water sizzling to steam as he runs. It takes him a moment to readjust his brain out of feral-creature mode to remember his modus operandi. Find those fucking miners, drag them back to HQ, collect his reward, and get his job and shit back.
An explosion of THAT size has to draw them out, he thinks to himself, as he runs along the now-panicking streets of Pickman’s Hope. They’re like ducks. They think they’re safe on the river until a thunderclap hits their ears, and then they take off real slow, so you can take your time shooting. Just like hunting ducks.
For good measure, Blondie sets a few more buildings in the downtown area of Pickman’s Hope alight. Indiscriminate chaos should help to keep that fire brigade off his back, even if they aren’t actively chasing him. But, as he runs through the streets, he realizes that on occasion, the sound of gunshots follow him closely. And when he stops along a more suburban road to take a small breather (which he finds odd, as he’s recently gotten used to not breathing naturally), he finds himself picking small caliber rounds, only a half an inch or so deep, out of his charred hide. He feels a small amount of respect well up for the people of the town, mostly out of pity.
It’s like throwing rocks at a steamroller, he thinks, turning the bullets to liquid in his palm. It’s stupid, but not about the direct effect, is it. It’s about the psychological effect. Strength in the face of futility. Maybe I’ll go and show them what that really means, then, if they want to get uppity with me. Fusillade was much bigger than this, and he’d heard that they’d lost quite a few city streets as a result of him testing his powers. Imagine what he could do now, after having practiced some on wildlife during the trip up.
He doesn’t get to imagine for quite so long, as, preceded by the sound of a roaring pickup engine, a knife is planted firmly into the square of his back, nearly knocking him off his feet. He looks up at the truck, full of what he assumes to be passing-by refugees— and finds everyone he ever hated, either sitting in the bed of it or assumedly sitting in the cab. The horn is honked a few times for good measure, and even though Blondie’s human brain tells him that it’s bait, his burning-creature brain forces him into a sprint after the vehicle, the fire inside billowing up in licks of flame from his nose.
I can take my time with this, so long as I keep pace, he thinks. Just like ducks.
The force of the explosion causes Samson’s back porch light to flicker, and in a moment’s notice, he sets down dinner onto the picnic table, throws off his hot-gloves, and runs inside to get himself dressed.
“Sorry folks, looks like yer’ friend’s here now, gotta get to work!” he says, sprinting inside.
All ten people, either sitting in the designated seats or leaning up against the deck’s railing, look at one another in a moment of silence. Brie, of course, is the first to stand up and say something. “May I suggest that we try our plan?”
“What plan?” Meat asks, sitting on the railing and letting their flaming feet dangle.
“The plan to use the local system of mining tunnels to escape our chasers?”
“We have a plan?”
Azariah holds up a hand. “I apologize, I was supposed to take the initiative on that. The old mines actually let out pretty close to Honeysett, since it was quicker to cut through the mountains to get back on the roads. Figure we could try to lose ‘em in there, since hardly anyone knows their way anymore.”
“This is the plan,” Brie responds. “Are there any objections?”
“Yeah,” Judith starts, “those mines are abandoned for a reason. Cave-ins, structural integrity failures, monsters— what happens if the route’s blocked?”
“Do you know where we’d be going, Azariah?” Meat chimes in, turning toward Azariah.
This, in turn, causes Brie to frown, and turn to the Hare herself. “You did not mention anything about cave-ins.”
“And the Devils. You know, those things that tend to turn up in old caves?” Judith says, frowning deeply.
“This is looking like a bad plan. Azariah—”
“Hold your horses,” he responds, holding up his hands. “Sam’s got a survey map from the last time the mines were scoped out. He’ll let us borrow it, and if anythin’ gets in our way, well, we’re ten strong, aren’t we? And we’ve got a Notus with us,” he points to Meat. “Nothin’ down there is fond of fire.”
“And it wouldn’t be better to stay here?” Leon asks, raising a hand.
“You think it’d be good to lead Blondie, and whoever else’s chasin’ us, to Sam’s place? Personally, I think it’d be a little disrespectful, seeing as how we’re already benefitin’ off his hospitality and effectively burning down his town.”
“He does seem to like the action, though.” Roxanne chimes in.
Azariah snorts. “As true as that is, it wouldn’t feel right to just hole up. I’m of the opinion that we should lure them outta this place, and use the mines to our advantage. Who’s in?”
Cherry, Olive, Roxanne, Azariah, Jules, and Lucille all raise their hands.
Brie holds up a finger instead, “May I ask one more question before I agree?”
“Of course, Ms. Brie.”
“Are we certain that Blondie will be the only one chasing us? I have been having a recurring nightmare about Piper smashing my head like a watermelon, and I cannot help but feel as though my brain is trying to tell me something.”
“There’s no guarantee.” His fuzzy maw twists, threatening a smirk. “You want back at her?”
“Not particularly.”
“You wouldn’t mind her gettin’ hopelessly lost in an abandoned mine, where she might get eaten by a cave creature?”
Brie ponders this for a moment. “I am in.”
“And how about you three?” Azariah asks, motioning to Judith, Leon, and Meat.
“I’m in,” Meat says. “I think our host was getting tired of me anyways.”
“That leaves you two.”
Judith and Leon look at one another, then at those around them. Judith sighs, and Leon offers a thumbs up as she says, “We’re outnumbered.”
“Perfect. Now, that leaves the matter of getting the dog’s attention.”
Jules clears his throat, standing up from his seat at the table. “Leave that to us, gramps.” He turns to look at Lucille, who though she seems disappointed that Jules just volun-told her, is equally eager to get back at that burning wolf. “Anyone down for a drive-by?”
Piper, bored and agitated, drums her fingers on the sedan’s dash. They weren’t able to procure any weapons in the past five days that would fit on their vehicles, and people were starting to get suspicious with the amount of money they were throwing around, combined with their conspicuously “civilian” outfits and their very in-a-hurry attitudes. Hell, even the armour plating that they got their cars outfitted with wasn’t all that great. You probably couldn’t bust down a single wall without totalling the car, and in that case, why the hell would you have gotten the plating in the first place? At least their wheels were all-terrain now, instead of the civilian gravel-and-pavement type.
In the passenger seat, Sundae absentmindedly fiddles with her revolver, spinning the barrel every now and then just to hear the sound it makes. In the back seat, Kranner is trying terribly hard to not take a siesta on company time. And in the other car? Jack and Nancy were talking about something, at least as far as she could tell, as they were parked off the side of the road in some brush.
There is nothing more absolutely boring than a stakeout. Absolutely nothing. Sitting around and waiting for something to happen is a great way to waste your goddamn life. If you can make shit happen, you should do it. Otherwise, you shouldn’t wait for something to happen to you— you should be doing other shit in the meantime. But, what could she be doing, exactly? It’s not like these idiots have anything else to do. And it’s not like she’s been bored these past five days. She’s been annoyed, sure, but not bored.
When she’s fully in charge of her next quarry, Piper thinks, she’s going to make sure there’s no waiting around. Downtime is for fucking clowns.
Right as she’s about to snap at Sundae for clicking the cylinder of her revolver, the rumbling of a truck engine suddenly passes them by, alongside what looked to be a flaming dog keeping a cool forty-five miles per hour jog. Both cars peel out from their hiding places, with Jack and Nancy in the front and Piper’s car in the back.
The cave system itself was nothing to take lightly even before the arrival of independent prospectors began turning the natural maze of its interior into a strange and tangled labyrinth. But, after the Shepherd Gemstone takeover and subsequent removal, it’s become one that runs dangerously deep. There are gorges and smaller sub-caverns which swallow any and all light, any wall might be far thinner than it actually appears to be, and that says nothing of the local fauna, much of which decided to move back in after the mine’s abandonment so long ago.
There’s a primary tunnel system that runs the length of the mine, sizable enough for large transport vehicles to pass through, developed when the digging got deep enough that it seemed sensible to just turn the level closest to the actual surface into a spaghetti-string roundabout for trucks carrying hefty loads of rock out. Subsequently, multiple entrances and exits had been carved too, allowing for Shepherd’s attempt to squeeze this stone bloodless to be on a larger scale.
A lot of external supports had to be erected to supplement the slowly eroding natural infrastructure of the caverns, however, and luckily enough the map in Roxanne’s hands has such things marked out, along with a great many various smaller details, such as where what had been mined and how bad it had been hit by the original takeover.
All that said, there is some level of hesitation to trust the map between Cherry and Jules, and most certainly Roxanne, as despite being the most up to date version it can be, they can see that it is, at minimum, more than five years old. Cherry’s a little too focused on making their truck go fast and avoiding potholes to really worry about it, but Jules and Roxanne lack a steering wheel and pedals to fret over so aside from the flaming beast following after their tails the next best thing to fuss about is this map— and the caves, specifically.
“Sure hope none of the exits have caved in since the last survey,” Jules says with an awkward laugh, shooting a fanged grin toward Roxanne. “It’d be just our luck to get away from this bastard and end up slamming into the rocks instead.”
“Jules, quit your jawing. Help with this damned thing, some of it’s getting on the floor,” she replies, trying her best to keep the paper settled in her lap.
An additional point to be made: the map itself sprawls out of their combined grip and into the floor, off to their side enough that Cherry needn’t worry about jamming the paper underneath the pedals. This is because the tunnel system itself runs far and wide beneath the valley itself, not every crack and crevice beneath the dirt’s been mapped out, but a great much of it has. Some think it might even reach all the way back to other Shepherd mining sites, but the tunnels that would connect them in that case would run so long and deep that nobody’s likely to survive, which is to say, anyone stupid enough to think that’s the case and try to run down those seemingly endless tunnels to get somewhere else far away are usually never seen again, and if they are it’s usually between something’s teeth.
So it is that after getting Blondie’s attention and, just as well, getting that of Piper and her crew, Cherry drives the truck hard across the stretch of abandoned road and straight into the wide, waiting mouth of derelict Shepherd Gemstone mining site five, otherwise known as the original Gutter’s Glade Claim, a winding, treacherous labyrinth that acts as the shallow end of a pool so dark, deep, and inhospitable to these surface dwellers that even the fiercest among them might have second thoughts when their minds drift to what lurks down below.
The drive there is tense but not particularly eventful compared to the initial arrival of their pursuer; he’s able to fire off a few shots from his mouth, sending screaming balls of fire toward the vehicle, but with Meat standing guard at the edge of the truck bed none are able to find any solid landing, knocked aside by their bare hands if not outright dissipated like so many embers against wet palms. It’s frustrating, even more so than the constant pelting of small arms fire slamming into his back from the two recently armored cars following hot in his wake.
Each one’s a pinprick of pain at the most, barely noticeable, probably someone trying to take potshots with something low accuracy. It’s a fair assessment; Nancy’s got herself halfway out of the second car’s passenger side window and has been pumping her shotgun nonstop, putting load after load of flechette shot into the werewolf’s hide to no avail.
The gunshots ring out, brief and thunderous amidst the already rolling rumble of the three vehicles and the constant, rhythmic thuds of Blondie’s feet pounding the dirt, gravel, and long uncared for asphalt into a loose, superheated sludge. By this point he’s gone on all fours to pick his pace up, dragging himself forward with each massive, clawed hand like he’s swimming, and by the point where the lot of them can see the entrance to the caverns he’s almost close enough to get a mouthful of Meat’s hand the next time they block his fireball.
In the truck bed, behind Meat, several folks try their own hands at attempting to slow him down as Brie and Lucille both begin pelting him, the former drawing her semiautomatic pistol and unloading a full magazine into Blondie’s face as Lucille greets him with a few cutlery sets’ worth of throwing knives and then a few of Samson’s actual kitchen knives, including but not limited to a chef’s knife he received only last year, a very unsatisfactory paring knife, and a cleaver that actually sticks in Blondie’s shoulder and causes him to lose pace for a brief, but welcome moment.
With that, and some huffing and panting, the lot of them are plunged into darkness— they’ve entered the caves.
Up above are long broken artificial lights which offer nothing, either broken or entirely unpowered; the only light of manufactured origin exists in the headlights of the truck and the two pursuing cars. As natural light goes, it’s impossible to not notice the glow coming off of both Meat and Blondie, a vivid red in contrast to the off-white yellow hue of the vehicular lamps and the soft, but unrelenting light emanating from mushrooms growing out of the corners, floors, and ceilings in small patches wherever a warm, moist corner might have been a prime bit of real estate for something to die in.
Such as it is, though it’s not sunlight, there’s enough of the various unnatural white, magical red, and residual blue to mix into some kind of ambient lavender, which paints Azariah’s features in the softest of violet as he turns toward the cab and knocks on the window. Once it’s opened by Jules, who’s still chuckling like a fool with minutes to live, the Hare pokes his head in.
“Roxanne,” he starts, “I’ve got an idea. It’s a great idea.” A grin crosses his muzzle, poking between the Fox and Cherry.
“If you’re thinking of doing something stupid, you had better stop now. Don’t you dare—”
“All ears here, old-timer.” Jules grins in turn.
Cherry shakes his head. “I don’t like the tone he just used. Roxanne, I can’t look, but is he—?”
“Jumpin’ out. Roxanne, you take good care of these kids for me. I got a tiebreaker to win.” Before another word comes there’s a steady vibration, a whirling, whistling sound, and Azariah’s already soaring through the air in a flying bound.
Blondie’s eyes go wide as from over Meat’s shoulder comes a screaming, stiff-eared bolt from the blue. The next thing that registers is pain in the form of Azariah’s knee getting deeply and intimately acquainted with his forehead, only barely missing the slavering jaws waiting to seize on anything. There’s a pinch too, as the old man digs his fingers into the burnt and broken fur atop Blondie’s head.
The two animals don’t lose much speed between them, even when Blondie’s been kneed in the face. Still running, now blinded by a face full of Hare, the werewolf attempts to keep pace with his legs and one arm as the other claws and swipes in an awkward, clumsy arc to seize at Azariah, who refuses to keep still and keeps shifting position like a jittering wind-up toy between fresh knees to the face.
In the cab Roxanne is raising hell so harshly that it’s overpowering the sound of the engine’s roar and causing everyone to look toward her. “You stupid old man, you get back here now! I did not walk weeks on a goddamn missing foot to lose you like this! Get back in this truck right now, or so help me!”
By the end of her sentence, Blondie’s got his claws in Azariah’s clothes and tosses him like a lump of garbage hurled up by a forceful drop in the trash can. Fortunately, the Hare rolls into the fall and immediately begins sprinting, darting to the right on the wide tunnel floor and actually holding pace with the truck itself, much to the surprise of those who’d only joined their group in Pickman’s Hope and to the fury of Blondie.
Up ahead, there’s a fork in the road; Azariah glances into the truck cab, locks eyes with Roxanne, and then darts down the path on the right with whooping mountain holler as Jules says, without thinking, “Exit’s to the left, kid.”
Cherry, of course, takes the left. It’s the pre-planned path, but now it’s also a good way to get both himself and Jules smacked in the backs of their heads by a wailing Roxanne. “Damn it!” She screams. “Damn it! Meat, do something!”
As Blondie peels off to follow the hooting Azariah, Meat takes a running start to jump after the both of them, heading diagonally across the truck bed from the back toward the front to keep pace with the wolf, saying only “I’ll bring him back,” to Roxanne before the three of them disappear down the actual split in the tunnel.
Jack and Nancy glance at one another before their car, Thistle’s old one with some shiny new armor plating, screams down the right path as well, picking up speed and blazing after the small contingency, leaving Piper, Sundae, and Kranner to follow after the main truck and leaving them in the dust.
“I hope those idiots know what they’re doing,” Piper snarls as Kranner starts lining up his rifle in the backseat, placing it right between the two women up front. Her eyes narrow and lock with Brie’s for a moment long, and she grins. “Leaves the fun bit to us.”
After the initial shock of sending his legs into overdrive has worn off (and his bones had creaked a little, causing him to regret not having stretched before enacting his plan of distraction), Azariah falls into a groove familiar to him from years of dancing in the ring with larger opponents. Fake-outs and false stops send Blondie skidding past him into walls, slow downs earn him a couple cheeky back elbows to the jaw, and sudden speed-ups help him avoid attacks that would otherwise send him off his feet. It’s a complicated dance of trying annoy the flaming dog into doing something radically stupid, while simultaneously trying to keep it behind him.
Meat, on the other hand, is finding themselves concerned by the presence of the car trailing the three of them. While it takes concentration to keep steady pace, as Blondie’s sheer size gives him a speed advantage over their non-lycanthropic body, it keeps getting temporarily broken by the ringing snaps and chugging pumps of Nancy’s shotgun. At the pace they’re moving, the shot is doing little more than shredding their clothing, something they’re certain that Roxanne will be upset by. But, after picking a few stray pellets out from behind their ears, they realize something. Azariah’s idea was better than the old man had probably intended, as now, they have two scapegoats to take the heat from Blondie off the two of them.
While there was an alright chance that they could lose the flaming dog in the tunnels, there was a less-than-alright chance of them actually beating him in a two versus one fight. They’d get tired before he did, and then that’d be the end of both them and Azariah. Now that there’s these two mercenaries, however. That means that if they can get Blondie to be preoccupied with shaking them off, they can book it down a side-tunnel and leave. Putting aside the mental planning for a moment, they look ahead to Blondie, who has taken to launching fireballs toward Azariah.
The hard part is going to be getting that old fart to listen to me, they think to themselves, throwing off what remains of the poncho as they run.
In the car, Jack has plugged up one of his ear-holes in an attempt to dampen the sound of Nancy’s combined war cries and semi-manic shotgun firing. And though driving with one hand isn’t something unfamiliar to him, driving with one hand while trying to follow a string of flaming individuals through tunnels where the clearance between his car seat and a cave wall is nigh unknown? It almost makes him a little annoyed. Which isn’t something he feels often, and it’s something that feels terrible. At the first opportunity he gets, he taps Nancy on the shoulder while she’s reloading.
“Nancy?”
“Not now, soldier! I’m getting my shells in!”
“Nancy, listen to me for a second.” She’s about to lean out the window again, when Jack takes his hand off his head to grab her by the shoulder and pull her back into her seat. “Nancy!”
“What in the WORLD is this insubordination?” she yells, slamming her shotgun into her lap. “Explain yourself!”
“Nancy, I think you’re being a little loud. I’m having a hard time concentrating.”
“It’s an intimidation tactic, soldier! Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of those before!”
“I don’t think anyone but us can hear you.”
“Then I’ll scream louder!” she says, starting to lean out the window again, only to be pulled back to her seat by Jack. “You had better drop the act, or as your superior, I’ll—”
“You’re not even hurting them! You’re using a shotgun, Nancy!”
“Do I need to repeat myself on the matter of war-time tactics, son?!”
The Android frowns. “I’m older than you.”
“And I’m your superior!”
“Listen,” he says, holding out his hand. “Save the rest of your ammo for later, when we’re out of the car. That way, you can guarantee that you’ll hit them. Okay?”
“And what if I don’t?!”
“You’ll be forced to fight two opponents with fire magic with nothing but your knife. And you’ll look like an idiot in front of your subordinate.”
That last line seemed to penetrate her battle-crazed skull. “Agreed. I shall stop screaming and shooting to conserve breath and bullets. Great idea, soldier.”
Jack sighs, and leans back into the seat of the old sedan. “Thank you, god.”
But, something makes him quickly lean forward again, peering into the darkness of the caves. The big flaming guy has stopped in his tracks, and distant thudding can be heard— the kind of thudding that can only occur when something hollow is being hit, banged, or punched.
Jack turns to Nancy and says, “Tuck and roll, soldier,” before flooring it.
Having just lost the Hare and the Skeleton through a thin crack in the wall, Blondie figures that the only way he’s going to catch up is to follow them through it one way or another. Gathering up flame from his belly, he belches fire into the stone in front of him, blackening it and turning it nice and loose for him to pick away at with his hands. Though, he hardly has time to actually do any of this, as quite soon after he’s finished heating up the rock, he hears the rev of an engine. Not a strong engine, mind you, but an engine that’s being pushed to its limit for the sake of one thing only. Even Blondie’s scorched mind can realize what that thing is.
He whips around from his position, watching as the passenger door is opened and a figure tumbles out onto the tunnel floor. He runs forward slightly, braces himself, and gets hit by the car.
Well, that’s a generous statement. As his feet dig trenches into the floor, and his hands sink into the plate that had been sautered onto the chassis of the vehicle quite recently, it’s far more like Blondie catches the car, causing it to skid with him back toward the crack. Once it’s come to a full stop, he looks up, finding himself face to face with a tin man, who is terribly surprised by the prospect that a car doing 75+ would be able to be stopped, bare-handed, by something like Blondie. In response, he smiles, and climbs onto the hood.
“Pick your battles better next time,” he growls, punching through the windshield and directly into the flat of the Android’s chest. Though, surprisingly, he doesn’t feel the crunch of bone. Hell, he doesn’t even feel the metal dent. What’s this guy made of, exactly?
“I think I’ve picked this one pretty—” Jack starts with his witty retort, before Blondie’s claws wrap around his torso, ripping him from his seat and through the cracked wall in a shower of stone.
“Azariah, listen to me.”
The Hare leans up against a pillar of stone, having brought the two of them into one of the natural caves that’d been checked for ore decades prior. “We’ve got time,” he pants. “What’s the need?”
“We need to keep running.”
“Lemme catch my breath first.”
“No, I mean—” Meat attempts to start, before a tin man comes crashing through the wall they had just entered, landing in a pile of his own rubble. “We’ll talk in a second.”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Honeysett isn’t the largest or most notable town in the world, far from it; if anything it’s something of a nowhere patch of suburb that just happens to exist on everyone’s map, nestled between the politically polarizing Pickman’s Hope and a more financially prolific series of towns that dot the Eternal Autumn up and out of the perpetual season’s territory. It exists, but it doesn’t necessarily exist in the same capacity as a place like Smokestone, Kiln, or Fusillade. It doesn’t have any great or notable exports, and by all means is something that Cherry has very recently started to appreciate— calm and uneventful, save for that lingering memory so long ago.
Its most prominent features are academic and domestic in nature; it has quite the library and a sizable museum, the latter of which in most towns in this day and age would roughly translate to “a great big box full of shiny things people are going to steal,” but nothing really goes missing from the Honeysett Museum for the same reason that Cherry knows it’s safest if they head straight there rather than stop for anything.
It takes a very particular set of characteristics to take up a line of work where your starting equipment, entirely self-funded, tends to be something like how Samson had described it, that being weaponry which was obviously in its second life, having abandoned something kind and clean like acting as a fencepost to take up the dirty, underappreciated but wildly overpaying process of fighting Monsters. Not that every adventurer in the world makes their name by punching up, of course, but that’s usually where they start. Someone, somewhere, has a bad night or a bad day and ends up smashing something creepy or crawly that had intended to eat them and it’s all history from there. In a night they’ve either solidified their need for the normal or a hunger for that dreadful master known as adventure.
Some go the extra mile and sign up with a larger association, such as the guild school, or simply tag along with other freelancers in a party, as Samson did, as Steiner and Baker did. Not all of this work trends toward the humanitarian, as inevitably a burgeoning class of warrior drifters willing to fight for cash tends to lend itself well to clandestine operations, especially in the corporate world and its sister, the criminal underworld, as Lucille and Jules each show. Being good with a gun and willing to use it for whoever pays best, that sort of work has two ways out— early retirement or death.
There aren’t a lot of adventurers who die of natural causes; those that do die in Honeysett, in a specific set of suburbs where those looking to ride out their days coasting on small fortunes from a few hard jobs make their place. Typically these people have a large stash of whatever loot they’ve gathered from trips into dangerous and mysterious climes, often strange and esoteric, beyond that of the normal person’s day-to-day life. Even the very sewers beneath the bustling cities could hold all kinds of creatures, all kinds of treasures, if one is noble, stupid, or desperate enough to pick up a sword and take them.
In Cherry’s neighborhood in Honeysett are the folks who made sure a place like Honeysett can exist, who every night toss themselves into the depths of cave systems like that beneath Pickman’s Hope to take on Cave Shadows and Skitterbears of their own volition, if not to protect others then to earn something to make the world just that much more bearable for those around them— if not to rid the world of something as dangerous and consuming as living, hungering entropy and its kin. Now tired and living out some sense of peace, they were the noble, stupid, and desperate, brave enough to walk into the darkest, most dangerous places in the world with little more to protect them than some sheet metal on their chests, a fencepost in one hand, and some good friends at their back.
If it doesn’t kill them, if they make it to retirement and have stuck it out, they’re like Samson— wavemakers in their own right, the movers and shakers whose names might cause shudders of starstruck awe or muted terror, depending upon the listener, and Samson’s just one.
Another man like this, another product of the bad day, wandering slayer of Monster and man alike, is unable to move his body. The heat fueling it is dying, along with the glow inside. Blondie is getting cold.
Piper, by this point, has run the corpse over six times, give or take a few where she just parked the car with its tire right on the damned thing’s neck. Still, despite her best efforts, it’s done little but turn the body and twist it, though it has managed to get it to stop moving. It almost looks dead for a solid minute as she gets out and grabs her recently acquired best friend, the Doorman crowbar, before he’s working his jaws trying to gurgle something out between globs of what she assumes must be some kind of life fluid. She’d call it blood, but it’s thicker, like dense bile or magma.
Sundae’s got both Jack and Nancy shoved into the back of the car, and that’s at least a slight improvement. It’s not great to think about, given as Jack’s joints are halfway to melted together where they aren’t just busted to hell and back, but he’s an Android, that can be fixed. Nancy might almost be in a state comparable, but all the same, a Vampire’s a Vampire. A few good cuts from a butcher shop or from some random civilian on the way and Piper’ll have her healing up in no time.
“He’s still not dead?” Sundae asks, walking over to stand side by side with Piper, a knife the length of her forearm in hand. “Nancy handed me this. Said you asked for it?”
Piper snatches the knife from the Elf, then looks down at the still gurgling, faintly glowing body of Blondie. “Still not dead. You’d think such a professional would at least do his replacement the courtesy of vacating the fucking premises,” she snarls, striking him in the neck with the heel of her boot, forcing the heavy form onto its back proper.
Sundae pulls the shotgun out of Blondie’s chest cavity, getting one hand on the gun itself and her boot against the bulk of burned muscle. Once it’s out, for good measure, she pulls out her revolver and pumps a few shots into the head. More glowing fluid oozes from the wounds, but the gurgling and the frothing doesn’t stop.
“I ever tell you what my daddy does for a living?” Piper asks, crouching beside Blondie’s head, eyes fixated on the slow, thick trickle running along his broken maw. Slowly, she runs the hook of her crowbar along the crisp, fractured, bony jaw.
Sundae shrugs. “I didn’t know you had parents. I guess it checks out, you seem about messed up enough…”
“Cute.” Piper rolls her eyes before tapping the top of Blondie’s head, earning a soft thudding sound. “He’s a butcher. He likes hunting and fishing in his personal time, but professionally he’s got a butcher shop. For a while he wanted me to take it over, then he let me get that job at Shepherd Gemstone to get some wanderlust out of my system. Now look at me…”
“Are you monologuing at me or at the dead guy?”
“Not… dead,” coughs and sputters Blondie. Each roll of his jaw and tilt of his head is twisting, wretched, and erratic. He can feel the muscles hardening as the flames go out, as the embers smoulder and the smoke begins to fade. “I’ll kill you. I’ll- kill- you- all.”
Sundae nearly doubles over as she laughs, but her cackling finds its end as a bronze tail slams into the back of her head, sending her to the stone floor in a small heap. When she’s back up, she locks eyes with Piper, whose jaw is tense, shut, and threatening to put a snarling set of fangs out from between her lips any second. “Humorless bitch,” is all she gets out before a hiss sends her straight back to the car, lightly wiping a bloody nose and a split lip.
Once alone, Piper turns to Blondie again, staying crouched, white-knuckling her fists around the handle of the hefty knife, the crowbar clattering to the rocks beneath them both. “You’ve got some nerve,” she says. “In the end, it wasn’t enough. Just die already, just die. I’m not going to let some flaming piece of shit get in the way of what I want. Nobody’s getting in my way, not those idiots in the car, not those miner fucks, and not you. I’m finally doing it, just like you told me back in Smokestone, remember? Take what you want, right?”
His dull, glowing eyes linger on her for a time, jaw still and voice silent, before he says, “Who… are you?”
Piper clenches her teeth and stabs Blondie in the throat, driving as far as she can and pressing on the deer antler handle until it threatens to snap under her lycanthropic power. Once it’s in too deep to handle, she picks up her crowbar and begins smashing the blade even further, like someone trying to split a log with an iron wedge.
Half-hearted and vain attempts to bite her as she did this came, but are all the same ignored as she continues to ram the knife deeper and deeper, only stopping once she hears the awkward scrape of knife point against bone, which tells her it’s about time to get to the good part.
Though she has to reach into the wound, she grips the handle tight in one hand and hooks his head with the crowbar using the opposite. Then, she rips them in opposite directions. The charred hide cracks and gives way, and as she slashes the knife free from its prison, she removes the head from the body, severing the spine.
Without a body to give it the strength of a voice, the werewolf’s jaws work themselves without any noise save for the wet sizzle of glowing, magically infused corpse-fluid on stone and jaw on jaw. She tosses the knife away, the blade ruined from the heat and warped beyond belief, before picking the head up with her gloved hands to look into his eyes.
She can see the glow fading, leaving him. The thing in her hands stopped being Blondie a long time ago, but it’s only just begun to stop moving. “Shepherd’s got a crap taste in officers,” she says with a sigh. “I should get Janet some flowers on the way back.”
Sundae flinches in the passenger seat when Piper finally sits in front of the wheel again, the head of the werewolf getting tossed into her lap during the process. A scowl crosses her elfin features, but not a word is uttered until Piper initiates the conversation, her voice rising with the struggling rev of the engine. “Have one of the others bag it on the way if either of them can use their fingers. We’re going to go pickup my car and then we’re heading for Honeysett— and keep your mouth shut, Sundae, or I’ll break it.”
There’s a moment of silence when Cherry finally parks the truck, dusty and covered in bulletholes, out in front of a quaint, red-sided two-level at the edge of the surrounding forest. Nobody but him gets out of the car (leaving the keys inside the ignition, mostly out of sheer exhaustion but also in case they needed to get going again), and nobody but him approaches the house. The front door is left open, with a screen door helping to keep the bugs out, and the smell of sugary, roasting vegetables wafts into his headspace before he even rings the doorbell.
“You’re always on time, Celica,” a burly voice calls out from inside. “You brought the wine this time, right?”
A large, bearded man sticks his head around the corner of the kitchen, working with something hot on the other side of the wall. His hair, a few weeks post-shaving, looks like it could’ve been a deep, rich crimson earlier in his life— it has since turned lighter, more gray-toned, with his long, well-kept beard reflecting this even more so. It helps to hide the wicked, messy claw scar wrapping up and around his right ear and ending at the edge of his right cheek. The glasses, thick-rimmed and square on his head, are fogged up from the hot kitchen work, and it takes him a couple tries of identifying the face at his door to realize who it is. “Cherry?” he asks, rubbing the condensation from his lenses. “Or am I scrambled from stickin’ my head in the oven all mornin’?”
Though he nearly passes out as he pushes the screen door open, Cherry finds himself grinning like an idiot at the sound of his dad’s voice. “I think it could be a little bit of both.”
The sound of a pan being set down on the table is heard, and his dad comes walking around the corner, apron still messy and standing only a few inches taller than his son, to give him a hug that lifts him clear off the hardwood floors of the foyer.
“My god, it’s so good to see you,” he starts. “You got some time off from the ol’ job? Actually, don’t answer that, I’ve gotta call your father inside. He’ll wanna hear.”
Cherry puts his hands over his ears temporarily, as the threat of losing his eardrums to the sound of “ASH! GET YOUR MUDDY BUTT INSIDE, CHERRY’S HOME!”, alongside the response of “WHAT IN THE HELL IS HE DOIN’ HOME ALREADY?! RED, THIS IS THE THIRD SURPRISE VISIT THIS WEEK, YOU GOTTA WARN ME WHEN YOU’RE DOIN THIS STUFF!” from the back of the house, presumably through an open window nearest the kitchen.
“Hey, dad?” he asks, voice muffled on Red’s shoulder.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not on leave. I quit, actually.”
“What?! Why?”
“And I’ve got a couple friends to introduce you to.”
“Don’t tell me you’re—” Red begins, before looking over Cherry’s shoulder and into the front yard. There stands everyone from the truck, unwashed and tired beyond belief, some waving hello to him, some leaning up against one another for various reasons, and some working on adjusting the bandages on the others.
“Yup,” Cherry mumbles, passing out onto the floor of the foyer, leaving his Dad to reckon with the nine strangers that now stand in front of him.
“Uh,” he stammers. “I’ll break out the drinks.”
There’s nothing quite like trying to pack twelve people into a relatively small living room and kitchen combo. Though couples like Azariah and Roxanne are more than willing to sit on one anothers’ laps, there’s still a lack of seating / standing room in a house where two large, old men consistently bump into one another when preparing dinner. Cherry, having been wafted back into consciousness by a mug of tea, sits on the back counter in the kitchen (definitely in the way of his parents, but at the moment they’d feel bad making him get down). Red and Ash, the latter of which dons a mane / beard combo of long, curly, grey hair and who stands a few inches taller than his husband, busy themselves settling everyone in, learning everyone’s names, and making room in the kitchen for the surprise party that’s just now beginning.
A cask of Painted Pumpkin wine is brought up from the cellar, and things begin to smooth themselves out. Azariah, Olive, and Cherry’s Dads get themselves into a conversation about adventuring. Jules, Lucille, and Meat hang back from the rest of the crowd, simply taking in the good vibes (and the third of which having to stand near the stone-lined fireplace, as Ash recognizes what sort of affliction they have and knew what it does to wooden flooring). Brie, Judith, Leon, and Cherry all have themselves a few sips of alcohol to reflect on the happenings of the day, and to unwind a little, seeing as how high tensions have been recently.
Olive fangirls out over the fact that Cherry’s parents are somewhat legendary in the area for their adventuring accomplishments, from their Dragon-slaying to their town defending, going so far as to say that they were part of the reason why she took up the axe to begin with. And when Cherry mentions that the whole neighborhood is filled with people just like them, and when Celica Dahlstad, the unkillable robin-hood repossession artist who’s wanted in thirty cities, walks through the front door with a pricey bottle of local bourbon? She looks as though she might explode with excitement.
Meat is eventually approached by Ash, who points them in the direction of a couple only a block away who are similarly undead, but who work with extremely fireproof material, and could, theoretically, get them some proper gear. As the conversation continues, they bond over their experiences on the road, and Ash sympathizes with the feeling of never feeling at peace with the way things are, and always feeling on edge. The only thing that helped him, as he puts it, was falling in love and wanting to keep it that way.
In an awkward, but extensive conversation about the state of Pickman’s Hope started between Brie, Azariah, and Roxanne, Brie asks about when it would be a good time to head back down, since she’d very much like to pick up her car so that she can visit her girlfriend up north, let her know what had happened and that they’re more than likely broke as a joke. Roxanne informs her that if she needs a place to stay, she’s more than welcome down at the old mining town, since there had been talk between her and Azariah about moving there later in the year, since Smokestone is no longer an option (and because they realized that they had missed Samson more than they remembered).
And eventually, things quiet down. Hours turn into days, and those days are spent on recovery, alongside familiarizing themselves with the neighborhood. Many folks drop by to say hello (and almost everyone being recognized by Olive, though she hardly ever mentioned it), each one wanting to talk, meet the new folks, check up on Cherry, or drop off some extra food. It becomes incredibly apparent to the runaways that most folks in this place, regardless of their general demeanor, are willing to help with anything and everything. Everyone grows their own food, everyone helps out with one anothers’ upkeep, everyone looks out for one anothers’ backs. There’s nothing like knowing just how awful the world can be to straighten out one’s sense of community. And there’s nothing like the strength gained from adventuring that turns these sorts of communities into some of the most well-protected on this side of the Dividends.
Damn the calm and the quiet. Every minute since Blondie stopped making noise has been so silent that Piper’s largely left with her own thoughts for company, as even her own underlings have been hesitating to speak unless spoken to— a preferred change over Sundae blurting out whatever she pleases or Nancy giving her a migraine, but the sheer amount of nothing that goes on during information collection and paperwork processing is detestable.
When the three remaining of her squad are patched up, Jack’s joints are all fixed and moving again and Nancy’s up and about, Piper’s found the important stuff. Old admin records of addresses and letters of recommendation, all sent from a nice little suburb in Honeysett. She knew it had to be in Honeysett already, but Pickman’s Hope and Fusillade were each much easier to find anything in. Honeysett has this odd corporate-blackout to it that she doesn’t get, but that’s not as important anymore. If those fucks aren’t hanging around with Cherry’s family, then she can use them as bait.
Nobody’s gone anywhere yet. For all the talk of places to go and work to be done, they’ve spent a lot of time just recovering and discussing their plans without actually acting on them. Cherry’s dads are a fountain of hospitality, and the neighbors are all willing to give their own two cents every once in a while too, especially now that the neighborhood’s nephew, Cherry himself, has returned— even if it means there might be a lot more engine revving in the near future.
When the big, faded luxury vehicle comes to a halt just behind the truck in front of the house, most of the folks, if not all of them, are out on the front porch enjoying something or other. Some are locked in conversation, as Judith and Lucille are, over the tenable nature of a possible flower shop in Pickman’s Hope, with Leon and Jules offering small comments here or there as Lucille runs through some basics of entrepreneurial startups having at one point technically run a small mercenary band during her stint with Shepherd Gemstone. Others are a bit busy enjoying their time with their partners— needless to say Azariah and Roxanne are practically attached at the hip and half-dancing to nonexistent music in the yard, Leon’s practically spent the whole time acting as a glorified lawn chair for Judith (and he wouldn’t have it any other way), and Red and Ash themselves have been exchanging the occasional kiss between shifts handling the grill out front, much to the chagrin of their son Cherry.
Olive and Cherry were each the first to notice the driver, with Brie and Meat being close behind only because the two only just walked around the house to head out front again with arms full of disposable plates, paper cups, and some bottles of drinks both soft and hard.
Piper steps out, grinning near ear to ear, and offers a brief wave before stepping around the car itself to walk onto the lawn. Behind her, the three still living members of the unit exit as well. The general underlying hum of enjoyment halts altogether as the four step onto the grass, and the silence grabs more attention than the throng of life had; neighbors poke their heads out of their windows and stand in their doorways, suspicious looks on their faces, hesitation in their movements only due to a lack of understanding. Were Red and Ash expecting more?
Everyone drops what’s in their hands and puts them up not in surrender but in preparation as Sundae, Nancy, and Piper each draw their weapons.
“Y’all really are stupid, going and hiding here like we wouldn’t have this address on record.” Piper grows taller, meaner looking as her fangs poke out from between her lips and venom drips to the ground, sizzling in the grass as her tail rolls and coils behind her. “At least you’re all in one place. It’ll be hard to fit everybody into the one car, but I’m sure you can handle the luggage stacking, right, Jack?”
A soft, “Yes, ma’am,” exits the bot as he steps forward, raising his fists.
Azariah sighs. “Survived Blondie, got this far, and now…”
“And now nothing.” Red says bluntly, walking out from around the grill, a “Kiss the Cook” apron on and a very, very warm spatula in one heavy hand. “You put your weapons down or you’ll regret it.”
Piper laughs, but Jack complies, immediately setting his hands to his sides and stepping back. This, of course, causes Piper to go from laughing to hissing at him. “What are you doing? It’s an old man, beat the shit out of him.”
Sundae clears her throat and puts her gun away. “Boss, taking on miners is one thing. Care to look around?”
“Why? It’s just some fucking suburb—”
She stops when she actually does glance around, and behind her little group, on the sidewalk and on the street, a throng of neighbors have cropped up.
Cherry’s known just about all of these people his whole life, and a few for a little over half. He knows them as friends of the family, honorary aunts and uncles, but Olive, who’s having a hard time keeping it together beside him, knows them all from newspaper clippings and bar stories passed around in her old traveling merc circles.
In a wide semicircle around the back of the unit stand Cherry’s neighbors, including but not limited to, as Olive hastily describes to Brie, Meat, and anyone else willing to listen as her whispers rise and fall with her enthusiasm, the following: Celica Dahlstad, whose reputation for being nigh unkillable is only really beaten by the near fantastical knife gripped in one of her hands; the Hunter Brothers, a set of middle-aged men with pointed ears, graying slicked back hair, and revolvers that make even Sundae’s seem pale in comparison, with multiple barrels and other odd additions; Mountain Road, a craggled, rocky Golem taller than even Jack with a rifle that actually looks more like somebody put a stock on a medieval cannon, whose appearance is close to a statue of a lumberjack come to life; and of course the couple that Meat had gotten a pair of fireproof shoes from, a tall, strong looking, stern woman with white hair, grey skin, and electric blue eyes. A similar glow creeps up her arms and legs, her pointed ears and icy fangs snaggling slightly out from her cracked, mirthless smile. Beside her is a grinning skeleton in a polo and khaki shorts who only makes it up to her shoulder; they’re Bill and Renee Crawl.
Behind the lot of them is Ash, in whose hands is held something massive, like a log of wood made out of some kind of stone; Cherry knows it as “that damned piece of shit,” from what Red had called it once or twice due to it falling over and wrecking some of their nicer furniture in Cherry’s youth. Olive knows that to be a weapon of literally Dragon slaying proportions, a log of the same stuff Jules’ old stick had been made out of with holes bored into one end for easier gripping. To put it simply, Ash was swinging around about half a tree’s worth of wood strong enough to, even in walking-stick form, force a hard left turn from a careening, out-of-control motor vehicle.
And here he is, eyes blazing with unfiltered rage from under gray eyebrows, stepping from between his neighbors to lean in toward Piper and her cronies to say, “Get off my fucking lawn,” in a voice barely above a whisper.
Every neighbor there is clad in something casual, from jeans to shorts to polos to short sleeve dress shirts, the sort with floral patterns and exotic fruit plastered all over, but everyone is holding something that makes Sundae, Nancy, and Jack stand down. It all makes Piper angry, but more so, she’s deadly jealous of it all. The blatant, casual display of power— everyone here could whoop her ass one-on-one and make it back in time for a beer. It’s equal parts terrifying and maddening, seeing just how much further she has to go before she’s one of them.
She holds eye contact with Ash, having turned around, until behind her head there’s a soft click. She blinks; Brie has placed a semiautomatic pistol to the back of Piper’s head. With a surprising lack of malice, Brie says simply to her, “Leave.”
The set of four make their way back to the car without any pleasantries or goodbyes, tucking themselves inside with their proverbial tails between their legs, save for Piper. She’s marched to the car, personally, by Brie and Ash, the latter of whom has set his Dragon-smashing log down because, as Red shouts from across the yard, “I don’t want to have to pay the town for cleanup, you messy bastard,” with the phrase “messy bastard” somehow coming out very sweetly.
It’s only after getting in the driver’s seat that Piper rolls down the window and eyes Brie, scowling. “This isn’t over,” she hisses.
Brie lifts the gun again, “I would say it is.” The car takes off down the road again as everyone watches.
Ash raises a brow and asks, “I thought you ran out of bullets?”
“I did,” she replies. “But she did not know that.”
A smile presses its way out from beneath Ash’s beard, and as he lifts his club to go stash it away again, he gestures toward the yard. “Alright everyone, stick around! Red’s cooking ribs.”
The neighbors all walk in to mingle too, though most leave after a minute or so to pop back over to their own houses for a moment— it’s rude to not bring at least a side, after all.
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Jules is still firmly and comfortably settled into a recliner, and nearby Lucille’s been looked at for at least long enough for Roxanne to essentially tape and bandage her nose into something resembling a proper position, operating on the assumption that it’ll heal right if the merc doesn’t go and headbutt somebody. Across from the two sits, Leon, arms crossed and head tilted up so that he can stare at the ceiling instead of at them.
Olive left the room moments ago at the request of Jules, though only after Leon gave her a nod of a comforting, worry-not sort. The silence hasn’t stirred since the sound of her feet disappeared among the halls, at least not until, finally, Jules clears his throat and says, “I think we have something to talk about, Leon. It’s Leon, right?”
“Yup,” he replies, turning his golden eyes on the two. “I know you two aren’t dumb enough to go after someone you don’t know the name of. I bet you know what size shoe I wear.”
Lucille laughs nasally, then groans and rubs her forehead. “Pain meds aren’t worth shit for me, should’ve known better than to take them. Yeah, we know, but not your shoe size. Just the important parts.”
His good hand raised, Jules clears his throat. “Might as well talk about it now, while we’ve got the place to ourselves. Right, Lucille?”
The woman’s eyes dart from the Vampire to the Orc, and she sighs through her mouth. “You probably know I was the head of security for a couple mining sites belonging to Shepherd Gemstone, with Jules here as my number two. Some guys of ours did some horrid crap to you.”
“That’s a way to put it. I’m sure you got an earful, those pricks seemed like the types to brag,” Leon replies.
Jules offers an awkward, almost diplomatic smile. “Yeah, we did. Busting someone is something our bunch brags about. They didn’t spare any details, either. Now look—”
A gloved hand is raised, silencing Jules as Lucille shifts to sit directly across from Leon, all before she speaks. “Leon, I’m not going to pretend it hurt to know somebody working for us did that to you. I’m going to be clear about it, because as much as I expect this to be grounds for you killing us in our sleep, we didn’t blink. What happened to you did not so much as register on our radar beyond being some new thing some dumb assholes were going to use to try and pick up some vapid morons at a bar someplace when they get really drunk and think being mean to poor people’s a turn on. I laughed when I heard what happened.”
“Lucille, I don’t think he wants to hear about…” He trails off.
Leon is standing up. His lips are curling awkwardly, as though frowning, but the missing tusks are leaving space not meant to be empty. “I’m leaving if you just came here to gloat.”
Lucille shakes her head. “No. We came to tell you the truth, not to gloat. All things considered you’re better off than we are right now. Anyway, the point is that when it happened, we didn’t care. It was just another day. All that pain and suffering, and for us it was another nine-to-five. I was handling guard schedules and worrying about a date the next week. Jules was probably more intimately and emotionally affected by running low on mustache oil than he was by what those guys did to you.”
“Lucille, I love you to death, but I’d really like to not get killed in my sleep—”
“All that said,” Lucille continues, interrupting Jules again, “we’re sorry that happened to you.”
Leon’s eyebrow raises. He sits back down and settles his heavy arms across his knees. He takes a shallow, but effortful breath. “Sorry? Why the fuck would you be sorry? You didn’t even do it.”
“We were their bosses, so we might as well have. If anything you should hate us for not doing anything to the guys that did.” Lucille leans back against her seat.
“Actually, we did do something,” Jules points out. “They were the first round of layoffs. Always get rid of the trouble hires and the guys with an eye for upward momentum when cutting expenses, Leo, saves you a million headaches.”
“Leon. Point taken. But, the guys who took my teeth…”
“Were fired at some point, yes.” Lucille rubs the back of her neck. “I’ll be honest, I don’t even remember their names.”
“I do, but only because I was handing out the pink slips. Never be that guy, Leon. Never. People’ll hate you for something you’ve got no control over, rather than something you actually do. It’s the worst kind of shit to be hated for.” Jules is smiling stupidly again, warm. “Yeah, though, we’re sorry that happened and all. We’ve done a lot of bad stuff in the past ourselves, but uh… I can’t recall anything like that. Even we’ve got a limit, and we’re horrible.”
“Oh, the worst.” Lucille laughs again, though now it’s quieter in pursuit of some sound that won’t make her nose feel like clawing itself off of her head. “We eat people and we aren’t even that fucked up. You know, that bunch of idiots made me feel like a normal person.”
Jules is snickering, and then he says, looking toward Leon, “Oh God, you probably think we’re crazy.”
“You say that like we aren’t.” Lucille’s doubled over and doing her best to keep her laughter down. “We’re every kind of screwed up. At least we’re owning it!”
Leon blinks. By this point his face has returned to a deadpan, and more than anything he’s just surprised. No anger registers on his features, no hate or pain. And then, without a warning, he begins to laugh too. Jules and Lucille both begin to rise in volume with him, and then all three have to force themselves to stop, with Lucille clutching her face, Jules clutching his side, and Leon clutching his chest.
When the sudden sounds of wheezing and pain from the three die down again, Leon speaks, saying simply, “You two are seriously fucked up.”
“That shouldn’t be news to you, pal.” Jules tilts his head.
“It’s not,” Leon replies. “Not in the slightest. I’ll say it’s my first time laughing at it, though, I didn’t know the world had this kind of humor to it. All this shit happens to me, and when I finally meet someone that apologizes and shows some semblance of wanting to take responsibility, it’s the people who didn’t even have a hand in wronging me. Now that’s a joke. You two are braver than I’ve been lately. How do you do it?”
“Do what?” Lucille’s finally sitting up again, readjusting her bandages and dabbing at her nostrils with a tissue from a small box nearby, soaking up a small amount of blood.
“Apologize to somebody you know you hurt, when you know there’s a chance they might fuck off into the sunset. How do you say sorry to someone when it’s only going to hurt? I think that’s the bravest, dumbest thing I’ve seen someone do today.”
Jules chuckles. “Only because you didn’t watch that detective get her ass kicked.”
Lucille, however, gives the question some thought. “Lately, honesty’s been a big deal, at least for me. This world’s fucked up, and you’ve gotta talk to the people you’re working with if you want to get by without losing something important. You can get far if you’re willing to be honest with each other, even if the truth is going to hurt. Sometimes it’s for the better.” She turns to Jules, then.
His smile’s gone. It’s been supplanted by an awkward pursing of lips and a contemplative hum, at least until he speaks again, saying, “I’m never gonna live that down even if you do forgive me for it. Yeah, your best bet is to be honest. If a lie’s necessary to keep somebody in your life, it’s probably a bad idea. Take it from me, Leon— that shit won’t stay hidden forever, and all lies fall through the cracks. Question is, whether you want it to fall out on its own or if you want to be the one to bring it down yourself. The latter’s the safer option, even if it’s scary as shit. Which is why we’re saying sorry.”
Leon actually smiles then. It’s as awkward as most of his expressions, partially from disuse and partially from a quirk of mouth muscles anticipating more teeth than he has, but it’s endearing enough. “Makes sense to me. You two are mercenaries?”
“Sure are. Pays to be a decent talker when you’re a private contractor. Don’t get all those steady jobs like those tight-pantsed guild pricks.” Jules scoffs.
Lucille grumbles in turn. “It’s not like you need a degree to crack skulls. Goddamned frilly plate wearing—”
“And don’t get me started on their rates, fuck! Practically undercutting the whole business.” The Vampire hisses, then grins. Lucille turns to look at him, and both laugh softly, quietly, again to avoid hurting themselves.
“You two really are weird.” Leon sighs, brushing his hair back as he looks down to the floor, between his boots. “If that’s all, I should get going. I’ve got some folks I need to apologize to, if not now then… Soon. Before anything else happens, since there’s always something happening and it’s always happening to us.”
“You mind me asking who?” Jules chuckles. “I can’t lie worth shit, but I can keep a secret.”
“No, he can’t,” Lucille corrects, “but if you’re willing to spill, we’ll listen. We’re sure nobody’s going to be asking us much about anything given I think most of your pals are scared of us, except maybe Olive— maybe— anyway, the point is we won’t tell anyone.”
“...You mind giving me a percentage of success, here? One’s been getting shit on for something I did, which I think he thinks he did. The other’s somebody who actually likes me, who’s been hurt pretty bad. But, uh, I realized I really like.”
Lucille holds up a finger. “Define “really like.” That’ll affect things.”
He rolls his eyes. “Really like. Nine out of ten on a scale.”
“Love?” Jules poses the question, a single word, with a tilt of his head and an infectiously nosy tone.
Leon sighs again, standing back up. “Sure. I didn’t think I was going to have to deal with it until I was somewhere better, to put it in other words.”
“Oh, you’re fucked.” Lucille shakes her head.
Jules nods, eyes shut sagely. “Positively fucked, Leon. Good luck out there.”
All the energy is sapped from Leon then and there. “That’s not what I asked for.”
“Ten,” Lucille says, affecting a near professorial voice. “Ten percent chance, in my professional opinion.”
Jules shrugs one shoulder. “I’ll be generous, you’ve got a fifteen percent chance. That’s all just calculation, though. Percentages mean nothing in the face of skill and gumption. Just don’t screw up, and you’ll be all good.”
Leon’s eyes shut and he places his hand against his face, palming against his nose and cheek for a moment, rubbing at one of his eyes before placing both arms back at his sides. “Thanks for the pep talk, you two.”
“Let us know if you need anyone to ruin your good mood again,” Jules says with a smile.
“We’re not going anywhere soon,” Lucille adds, leaning further back in her seat.
Leon nods, then heads out of the room. “I get the feeling.”
With Brie all patched up and fast asleep in one of the guest rooms, the three old-timers find themselves in the kitchen post-makeshift medical accommodation conversion. Roxanne rinses off her hands for the last time, wipes her forehead, and sighs deeply.
“Good lord. You wouldn’t mind breaking out the bourbon, Sam, would you?” she says, walking over to Azariah and practically falling into his chest.
The Hound chuckles, and takes no time to open a high cabinet, pull out a bottle of dark brown liquor, and pour everyone a glass. “Cheers,” he says, “to old times.”
Both Roxanne and Azariah look at one another for a moment before downing their drinks. It wasn’t entirely unrelated what he had said, but it was a little unexpected.
“I don’t remember much of this happening back in the old days,” Azariah mentions. “My memory goin’ bad?”
“Sometimes I forget where I parked my car. Or when I’m shoppin’, I’ll forget my grocery list. Maybe your head’s goin’ all mushy like mine,” Samson laughs. “In all fairness, though, this whole fiasco’s just reminded me of how things used to be. The excitement of it all. I know we weren’t out there doin’ this kinda stuff, but it’s got the same tune. The same feelin’ in my chest, ya’ know?”
“I would say that’s appropriate. I don’t think anyone within half a mile didn’t feel it in their chest when you pulled the trigger on that snake,” Roxanne chuckles.
Samson points his glass toward her. “And you haven’t changed one bit, neither. Always so literal, even after stitchin’ someone back together.”
“You want literal, you wait until that girl wakes back up. She’ll be the one driving you crazy.” She adjusts herself to not be leaning up against the Hare anymore, and holds out her glass for a refill. “It’s funny. She finds me nearly dead, and immediately thinks to patch me up. She saved my life, you know. And now, I’ve returned the favor.”
Azariah grabs the bottle and pours her another. “How’s the leg, by the way? Last time we met, you were just gettin’ used to walkin’ again.”
“Wait, you’re missin’ a leg, Roxanne?” Samson asks, raising his eyebrows.
She pulls up on a portion of her dress to reveal the prosthetic foot, all dusty and banged up from the adventure. “A foot, and it’s doing quite fine. I feel I might need to wash it soon, however. I don’t think it’s meant to do the things I’ve put it through.”
“I was more referrin’ to you,” Azariah wraps an arm around her.
“Oh, honey. It doesn’t hurt anymore, though I do get some of those phantom pains every now and then. Mainly when I’m feeling a little down, but these days, there’s been very little time to wallow in it.”
“I agree.”
“And how about your back? You seem to be standing taller than usual.” Roxanne gives the Hare a pat on the chest. “Has all the frolicking in the countryside helped straighten you out?”
“‘Straighten’ is a strong word, I think,” he replies. Samson cough-laughs in the background. “I’d say it just ‘helped me realize some things about myself’. And it wasn’t the countryside either, it was a visit from the chiropractor.”
Roxanne frowns. “The last time I checked, there aren’t any of those whack-jobs for miles.”
“You’re right, the one I met recently just died in a fiery explosion.”
The Fox’s mouth opens in disbelief. “No.”
“Yes, honey. That’s exactly what happened.”
“Can ya’ put a friend into the loop with these things, folks?” Samson adds, pouring himself another glass.
“You tell him,” Roxanne says, downing her own.
“So, y’know that guy who’s been chasin’ us?”
“Yeah,” Samson replies.
“Well, right before he died, he found us. And though we tried to get him off our trail, it wasn’t workin’. So, I decided to go round two with him.”
“And?”
“I lost pretty bad. And he decided to pick me up with both his hands and try breakin’ me over his knee for good measure. Send a message to the others, you know?”
Samson practically barks with how hard he laughs. “And ya’ got back up, didn’t ya?! Fresh as ever?!”
“Havin’ rocks in your bones seems to help when it comes to that kinda stuff. Put the spring back in my spine.”
“Did ya’ give’im the flyin’ knee? Tell me ya’ knocked his lights out, Azariah.”
“Oh I gave him the works, alright. You could call it a total power grid failure, but that’d assume he had anythin’ more complex than a lightbulb up there anyways.”
“God,” Samson says, smiling like a fool. “What I wouldn’tve given to’ve seen that. Seein’ ya’ get at a pup like that would’ve been better than barbeque. Would’ve been just like old times.”
“I feel better than old times, Sam! He really did me a favor.”
“Are ya’ sayin’ you’d make a comeback in the ring?” he suggests.
“No, no, no,” Roxanne cuts the two off. “No more of this macho crap.”
She turns back to Azariah, and holds a finger up to his face. “You’re lucky we weren’t in Fusillade at the same time, mister. I swear, I would’ve dumped your ass then and there. I can’t believe you’d be so reckless. And at your age too!”
The Hare takes her hand in his own. “I thought we weren’t on?”
“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.”
“It was life or death. And I made the decision to fight for the former. And I’m still here, at the end of it all, so it ain’t like things were all that bad to begin with.”
“You aren’t acting like the man I knew back at the mine,” she says.
“You’re right, I’m standin’ much straighter than I was before,” he replies, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “It’s fine, honey.”
“Don’t do it again, or I’ll cut you open myself to see if those rocky bones of yours are as tough as they sound.” She pours herself another glass. “Also, Blondie’s still alive, in case you haven’t heard.”
“What?” Azariah’s ears twitch, and there’s a long, uncomfortable silence as he glances between her and Samson.
“You know our friend, Meat? Blondie’s turned into one of those Notuses too.”
“The person who burnt a couple footprints onto my nice wood floors?” Samson mentions, frowning. “They were pretty aloof for someone who causes property damage by walkin’.”
“They’d just been unconscious in your lawn, Samson. Don’t be so hard on them.”
“Fair enough. I expect them ta’ help out with the repairs, though.”
“Sam, they’d just burn the planks.”
This hits the Hound quite hard, and he decides to take a swig directly from the bottle to help soften the blow. “Don’t mind me.”
She turns back to Azariah. “Yes, Blondie’s alive. And he’s got the same sort of control over fire magic that Meat does, so long as there’s some consistency in how the Notuses abilities’ are given.”
“So that means…”
“Yes, that means that the guy whose ass you kicked has gotten as much, if not more, of a ‘fix’ than you did.”
“That’s a pickle,” Samson adds.
After another quiet moment, Azariah smiles and says, “So we’ve got a tiebreaker on our hands?”
Roxanne pinches his arm. “You’re not fighting him again, you old bastard! He nearly burnt down Fusillade!” she half-yells.
“The boys’ve been sent out to help with’em,” Samson says. “There ain’t no business like the business of cleanup.”
“It’s that bad?” Azariah asks.
“Ohhhh, yeah. Entire buildings need to be torn down with how much damage that sucker did. Some roads need rippin’ up too, since the heat’s got’em all cracked an’ unsafe. Didn’t realize that was your guy, though. Tiebreaker indeed.”
Roxanne points a finger at the Hound, who chuckles. “Don’t encourage him!”
“What, it ain’t like I won’t be there cheerin’ him on, Roxy. An’ if things go wrong, I’ll be there to kill the bastard anyways. You will too, right?”
“I don’t like the sound of gambling with our lives so that you can have a rematch,” she grumbles.
“Well,” Azariah starts, hugging her from the side. “It’s probably gonna happen anyway, so we should think about what we’re gonna do in that situation.”
“I’ve got a boxin’ bell in my shed we could bring,” Samson adds.
There’s a nervous energy on the back porch as Judith and Cherry settle down to sit on the step and Leon stands opposite, hands folded in front of himself and his expression dour. The air’s cool and the sky, like his expression, is cloudy. Finally, he raises one of his hands to them both. “Hey. There’s something I’ve been meaning to say. Especially to you, Judith. I’m sorry.”
Judith crosses her arms, then nods. “What, for ditching me back at the bar? You should be, shit. But whatever, I forgive you. It was one time.”
Cherry glances between them both and says, “I don’t think he’d call me out here if it were just about that, Judith.”
“Like there’s anything else to be said about you?”
A cleared throat. Leon watches as the two look to him again, this time with added attention as he again says, “I’m sorry. This is— it’s hard to get out, but now’s the best time. Remember what happened back on-site, when that drill blew up.”
“Hard to forget what Cherry did to me.” A pointed glare is leveled at Cherry, who simply sighs and bows his head.
Cherry mumbles, “Sorry.”
“Cherry, it wasn’t your fault.”
Both Cherry and Judith show some dumbstruck faces before the former lapses into the confusion and the latter into rage, with Judith tersely stating, “He took my fucking hand.”
Leon shakes his head. “No, I did. I fumbled adding that slag to the water supply. Added the whole fucking thing on accident. I’m amazed you didn’t see it, Cherry— and if you did, I appreciate you keeping quiet. You don’t need to worry too much.”
“No, I didn’t. I was distracted,” Cherry says softly, “by the new model and by Judith yelling at me.”
“Well,” Leon begins before Judith can ask why this conversation’s happening, it seemed damn well clear cut to her what happened, “either way, I was the one who fucked it. The stupid machine blew up because my fingers slipped.” One heavy hand reaches up and smooths his hair back as his eyes move from their position staring at the ground to searching their expressions. “And, I let Cherry take the fall. Seemed like the better option at the time. Compared to sticking my neck out over it, at least. Especially after we started talking more, Judith.”
She’s silent, expression far away. No anger’s there, something unexpected on Leon’s side of things, but there’s something else in its place. Confusion. The wheels are turning without a direction; a conflict of interests, maybe. It’s a bit new to her. At least anger’s a simple thing, easily directed, but this isn’t. It refuses.
“I wanted to tell you back at the bar. Those locals started getting up in our shit and I—”
Judith raises her hand. “Leon, stop. Please stop.”
He frowns. “I know it’s bad. I disappeared on you when those idiots showed up, but—”
“I asked you to stop,” she interrupts again. Her hand goes to her face during the silence, rubbing at each eye individually as she keeps her other arm tucked neatly against her body. “Don’t open your mouth. Just be quiet. You too Cherry. Just— fucking—” Her tone’s faltering with each word now. The semi-malicious, self-righteous anger she could normally muster isn’t clicking. There’s no lengthening of fangs or intensifying of the green in her eyes as she finally opens them again, locking gazes with Leon. There are small tears, pinpricks in the corners of her eyes, but no more than that. “Both of you just stay quiet. I need to go take a breather.”
She stands and ignores both men as they make half-hearted, lackluster gestures to get her to stay. By the time actual words come out of Leon’s mouth, “Judith, wait,” she’s disappeared right in front of them both.
Leon puts his hands to his face and grumbles a few curses beneath his breath before he turns and allows himself to drop into a spot beside the still dumbstruck Cherry with a heavy thud. “I fucked that up pretty bad, didn’t I? Shit.”
Cherry sets a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Actually, all things considered, I think that went far better than I expected it to. You know, you’re right, too. I probably would’ve tried to cover for you if I’d known. You two seem happy together.”
“Really? You’d really endure her bullshit for the sake of keeping us close? You’re pulling my chain.”
After scratching his chin, Cherry shrugs. “She didn’t scream at us. She didn’t call either of us idiots, or start getting really, really verbal. She also didn’t turn into a big wolf and kill us, which is definitely something she can do, if you’ll remember.”
Leon shakes his head. “She only does that when she’s stressed. And she doesn’t kill anyone.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t kill me over that Skitterbat thing. Man, I miss Skippy. Hey, do you think I could find one of those things closer to home? I bet Olive would know.”
“How can you joke around right now? You saw her.” Leon’s brow furrows. “She looked like she was having a crisis. She probably fucking hates me now.”
Cherry shakes his head. “I can joke because it’s, uh, really the only thing I can think to do right now. It’s relieving to know that I didn’t actually do anything wrong, but it also kinda sucks. I guess I’m just trying to soften the blow, a little. Get you going again, to try and keep the conversation going when she’s ready. And yes, Leon, she likes you. She doesn’t just hate you less than the rest of us, she likes you. She doesn’t hate us, not anymore I think. And neither do you. You like us too.”
A shallow sigh escapes Leon, who rubs his jaw. “Yeah. The old Hare’s a good listener you’re a good head to have, and Olive’s supportive. Even if she gets the shakes.”
“And you want to sleep with Judith.”
“I never said that.”
Cherry smiles. “Didn’t have to. Nobody with half a brain would admit to what you just did if you didn’t feel something really deep. Or, you know, just really intense. Sometimes it’s shallow and just doesn’t get any deeper but it makes you do things like buy something stupidly expensive from an autoshop because you want to have a brief conversation with the register guy who’s got these magical looking eyes…”
“You’re losing me here.”
“Sorry, I think I was too. The point is, while it’s nice to come clean about this sort of thing, this is far and away the sort of stuff you admit to when you’ve got nothing to lose or a lot to gain, and based on how you two act it just makes sense. It’s like putting a matching pair of puzzle pieces right next to one another, and telling me to solve.” Cherry pats his shoulder again. “So what, though? She’s obviously into you too.”
“That doesn’t solve the problem of her hating me, though. I’m past that everyone and their fucking mom can tell I’m into her. I’m surprised you don’t hate me! She’s treated you like shit this whole time all because I didn’t own up.”
A sigh enters the open air before Cherry shakes his head. “I used to feel pretty bad about it, yeah, and I’m kinda angry that you didn’t own up when I was getting put down for it. All that said, I haven’t had much time to really stew in it. I nearly broke my nose trying to kill someone who I thought was about to kill all of us. Inside that house, right now, is at least two people who tried to kill us and a third who decided against hauling us to be cut up like lab animals only because Roxanne got through to her. Plus, if what Olive told me is true, that man who we saw die is not only still alive, but apparently now has flaming superpowers, plus another ex-foreman is chasing us too.”
Saying this, Cherry takes Leon’s head by either side of it to force the Orc to look him in the eyes. “Being called an idiot by someone whose vocabulary is half swears stopped being a big deal for me somewhere around when I thought Azariah died. Leon, I’m a little mad about all of this, but God— think for a second, man.”
“Point taken.” Leon pulls his head back, then rubs the back of his neck. “So… The Judith question?”
“Let her take her time,” Cherry says. “If she forgives you, she forgives you. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t. It was an accident and she likes you, my money’s on forgiving you. Don’t push her, though. She has every right to be mad over getting hurt, but she doesn’t seem like she is.”
“Okay. Maybe you’re right. Or maybe she’ll toss me to the curb when this is all over.”
“Over?”
Leon’s brows raise. “Yeah, Cherry. Once this is over. When we get out of range of the company? When we’ve got no more reason to stick together. We’re probably gonna split once it’s safe to, right. What, did you think we were gonna be a forever unit?”
“I mean, a little, yeah. Maybe not Azariah since he needs to stick with Roxanne, but at least you three. And where will you go, Leon?”
“Honestly?” He blinks. “I was hoping Judith might help me there. Doesn’t seem too likely anymore.”
“Nowhere to go?”
Slowly, the Orc shakes his head.
Cherry smiles slightly. “There’s a nice couple of guest rooms in my dads’ house. Consider it an offer, if we get there and you’ve still got nowhere.”
“Thanks, Cherry. I appreciate it.” Leon smiles for a moment, then leans up and glances toward the backdoor. “Hope she’s alright.”
“Someone’s got it bad.”
“You feel like telling me more about magic eyes?”
Cherry laughs. “Alright, fine. I’m rooting for you, man.”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
What a bust. Not only was it a complete waste to extend an olive branch to someone in another division, she ends up quitting in her face, too. This has now become an issue of insubordination, of disrespect— so, she adds Brie’s name to the list. It’s not a literal list, of course, she’s not a compulsive note taker like that idiot she just wanted to help, but the names are engraved on a big plaque somewhere in her mind, no, on multiple plaques on the sort of hanging mounts you put taxidermy animal heads on. Each one’s empty at the moment, and she’s just added another wall mount with the following name etched into its shiny, entirely mental and metaphorical nameplate: Brie.
On the bright side, she still has the crowbar. It wasn’t hard to slink back over and snatch it up once those idiots had gone inside and the feel of her insides nearly getting pulped through sheer force had subsided. That uppity pencil pusher had it coming for abandoning ship, though. So what if she’d been rejected (again)? So what if that stupid, insignificant number cruncher practically spat in her face? She can spit back. She’s going to spit on every single one of them, and her spit is gonna feel much, much worse than theirs ever could. She’s going to score each and every single one of them like crispy skin on a holiday roast, just to drip her venom into their cuts, no matter how shallow.
Standing in front of Thistle’s house, she’s breathing heavy, she’s undoing and redoing her ponytail over and over, each time missing some hay-colored lock that refuses to obey her. After three times attempting to get it all in order she brushes her shoulders off and, finally, glances toward a new car in the driveway. It’s not Thistle’s well cared for beater, that’s where it’s been parked since she left. After all, when she and the others headed out initially the old man was in no condition to be going out and about. Alive, sure, but not in any state to be driving.
This car’s fresh off the lot, just expensive enough to show some displeasure with the lower end vehicles available but not opulent enough to draw attention— and there are no identifying brand markers, not even the manufacturer is visible. Whoever parked here isn’t interested in being looked at for longer than the second necessary for the average civilian brain to log and discard the thing in its totality.
She’s been dreading this. She knows it’s not local, it’s not beaten up or seen enough dirt roads to be local. This thing’s from the city, and if they’re here it can only mean one thing— the cavalry has arrived, because this is yet another issue she needs on her plate. Blondie didn’t need any damned peons, but poor little Piper, she obviously needs a squad of goons to help her get the job done. She didn’t, she doesn’t, but it’s just too late now isn’t it?
Hieronymus T. Thistle is barely conscious, heavily bandaged, and sitting at his own dining room table with four frightening-looking folks that didn’t even so much as tell him their names. Two of them have long guns, one a rifle and the other some kind of fancy, big city shotgun, and another has some absurd looking handcannon of a revolver hanging off her hip. The last fellow doesn’t appear to be carrying anything except for a month old issue of a cooking magazine.
Thistle’s eyes are glazed over. The idiot reading the magazine, “Jack” he thinks he heard at some point, overdid it with the pain meds. Not enough to kill, Thistle knows he’s not dying from this, but he’s gone straight from nearly passing out due to pain into nearly passing out because he’s high as a kite. High enough but still hurt enough that he won’t be having the food that was put out anytime soon.
“Mr. Thistle’s not looking too good,” Jack mumbles, having pulled down his mask. “Should we get him to an actual doctor?”
Between a small spoonful of food and a few comforting, albeit unsettling, spins of her revolver the gunslinger says, “Doesn’t really matter. We aren’t going to be here for long, after all.”
“Get with it. We ain’t here for pro bono work, boy.” To punctuate his sentence, and to get the point across, the Sniper leans his chair back and puts his dirty boots on the table. “Should’ve just killed him.”
The Shotgunner clears her throat before putting a fist against the table. “Flagrant inelegance and unprofessional! First and foremost— get your feet off the table! Nextly, how would we dispose of the body? He’s not only a local, but a coworker, in technicality.”
“Could probably mulch him.” Another spin of the revolver’s cylinder ends her statement. “He’s an organic.”
“Plant man becomes plant food.” The Sniper tilts his head, glancing toward the near catatonic Thistle over the twin mountains in his vision that are the tips of his boots. “Heh, I like the poetry of that. Kill him and gimme an hour. I can get rid of it.”
“Again I must ask how you actually plan to discard it!” The woman with the shotgun’s standing now. “That’s an order!”
Jack sets down his magazine, sighing. “Ms. Nancy, you’re not our boss, and there’s no pecking order until—”
“Until I show up,” hisses Piper, who has been standing in the doorway for the past three sentences. “What is this, a fucking sewing circle? Shape up if you’re going to be dragging me down.”
The four get out of their seats and stand across the table from her. She can gather a great amount from just the way they’re standing, the way they’re looking at her, the way they’re pointedly not looking at each other or at Thistle, whom she is surprised to see is out of bed.
In order stands the woman with her revolver, the Sniper, the one with the shotgun, and then their fourth, who appears to not actually have any real weapon on him. Jack’s the tallest, though largely because he’s one of the only two standing straight. The other’s Nancy, the woman with the shotgun, who’s shorter than him but makes up for it with her presence via some kind of salute and a hearty, abrasive, “YES, MA’AM.”
The shortest is the Sniper, since he’s old and stands all hunched. She can tell that if he stands straight he’d be on par with, if not looming over even Jack. Next shortest is the last of them, the one with the revolver, who if all were standing as straight as can be, would actually be somewhat taller than Nancy. She’s shorter due to her posture involving her lean back and her knees bend slightly, as though near perpetually pressed back by wind. It’s a relaxed, but disrespectful posture, the sort with her head tilted to the side as she eyes you up from down an alleyway.
Piper paces from one side of the room to the other, looking them all up and down before allowing the words “Helmets off,” to scrape out between her fangs. “Names, now. And you know what? Previous work experience.”
Smoothly, each one removes their respective helmets and masks, treating Piper to a small menagerie of oddities.
Beneath the Sniper’s helmet is a face of glass, fractured in places and restructured in others, lacking a nose and much of one cheek. What hasn’t been destroyed looks scraped and sanded with age, as one might expect the look of a scuffed lens left in the sand except everywhere on him, save for his eyes. His eyes are clear enough that were someone to stare deep enough with a good light they might be able to see right inside of his head. His old and shattered face contorts into a smile as he says, “Kranner. Several time marksmanship champion down south. I used to do hits, now I do this.”
Piper turns her nose up at him, letting her eyes drift to Nancy, who pulls off her helmet to reveal sharp, gray features and short cropped black hair. Her ears are pointed, though a bit bent, and her nose resembles that of a vampire bat. Her fangs are snaggly as she bares them in a smile, and with her usual gusto belts out, “Lieutenant Nancy, ma’am!”
Piper rubs her own jaw, considers her for a second, and rolls her shoulders. “A glass man and another fucking Vampire. Am I going to need to keep you two busy?”
Kranner clears his throat, then rasps out, “I ain’t fragile. And she ain’t a bloodsucker.”
“I prefer raw meat, ma’am!” Again Nancy raises her voice, causing Piper to hiss.
“Alright, alright, just quiet down!” Her gaze drifts, then, to the revolver nearby— then up to its owner’s face.
White silver strands of straight hair hang to a perfectly even cut bob, whose lower edge is just against the lobes of her pointed ears. Her eyes are wide, and the cool gray, like morning ice, threatens to draw Piper out of her anger. Still, it takes more than a pretty pair of elfin eyes to quash this rage. Besides, Piper’s spoken for. An uncomfortably gentle smile and a soft voice draw her to reality.
“My name’s Sundae.” In time with the soft and sweet final syllable, her revolver’s cylinder clicks into place. “Shepherd hired me on after I got out of prison.”
“And what did you do?”
“To get into prison or to get hired?”
Piper scoffs. “Do I look like I care?”
Sundae’s smile spreads a bit. “Sorry, non-disclosure agreement.”
“The crime or your work history?”
“Yeah,” she says noncommittally, brushing silver locks back behind one ear. “Anyway, my name is Sundae. How do you feel about civilian casualties?”
Piper’s eyes roll. “Just don’t tell anyone who you work for and don’t overdo it. And who’re you?” Finally, her eyes settle on Jack.
His face is simple and metallic. His jaw is dented somewhat, which adds some character to his tin-man charm. “Jack, Ms. Piper,” he says, hands folded behind his back. He smiles afterward, which, with the dented, slightly skewed jaw, gives him the appearance of a child’s well loved posable action figure. “I once handled a contract dispute with some Gretchin closer to the mountains.”
She looks him up and down, then purses her lips for a moment. “You got a gun? You don’t seem to have one.”
“Didn’t need one then, don’t need one now.”
“Alright.” Piper looks them each over one more time, then lists off each name. “Kranner, Nancy, Sundae, and Jack. Alright. You four better tell me some good news.”
Nancy forces herself straighter than before. “We are here and fully prepared to handle the operation at your leisure! Tell us your plan and we’ll execute with extreme prejudice!”
“Also that guy Gilroy’s got an in-house bounty set up for that other guy, Blondie. So, if we nab him while we’re out you’ll get a really, really big bonus,” soothes Sundae.
Piper smiles. “Good. Okay, that’s all good. I don’t need to prep any of you and that just means more money for us. Great.”
“Hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Kranner interjects with a slightly raised hand, “but while we’ve got means to handle him, we still need to find him.”
For a moment, it’s as though the slowly rising good mood’s been crushed. Jack, Sundae, and Nancy all turn their faces toward Kranner, who doesn’t look any worried over the matter. Piper, of course, is the worst, with narrowed eyes and bared fangs and her forked tongue poking out to extend her softer syllables into small hisses as she says, “What do you MEAN we still have to find him? You idiots have no INTEL?”
“Well, ma’am,” begins Jack, awkwardly and anxiously patting his hands together as his softly glowing eyes scan the room, refusing to make contact with his superior’s, “thing is, we know he definitely headed up this way after an encounter with Mr. Gilroy, but we lost track of him a bit west of Fusillade. He— uh— went off-road. I know that’s not what you want to hear right now, but we know he’s definitely coming here. Definitely.”
“And why wouldn’t he just fuck off into the Dividends instead?” Piper’s pacing, her tail’s lashing itself about, she’s starting to get taller. All four step back from the table as the fangs press out from between Piper’s lips and the thrashing appendage behind her swipes a table leg, snapping it and sending the entire affair, with all their food, to the hardwood floor— alongside the still largely unresponsive Thistle, whose only sound is a groan.
Nancy clears her throat. “He was very adamant during his conversation with Mr. Gilroy that he has plans to return to work! I was there in the room while they spoke, ma’am.”
“Stands to reason that he’s plannin’ to hit when least expected,” Kranner says. “He could run, but he’d have nothin’ anywhere else. If what snaggleteeth over there heard is right, we don’t really need to find him. He’ll find us.”
Piper’s claws have busted through her gloves and she’s rubbing her face, feeling it grow harder, scalier. It itches, it itches so much. She wonders often if those who grow fur feel better than anybody whose body’s texture changes with this. Those damn dogs don’t know how good they have it. “You not only LOST a big, flaming corpse,” she spits, entire body contorting as she struggles to keep the transformation down, “but he’s somewhere nearby, getting ready to attack? How is this good news? You’re idiots! You’re all morons!”
Jack clears his throat. “He’s after the miners, right? We can probably handle them all at once if we just let him make the first move.”
Piper stops, turning her gaze on him. “And let him tire himself out dealing with them?”
“As I see it,” Sundae pokes in, “seems like a good way to handle it. Great idea, boss.”
“Yeah, yeah it is.” Piper smooths a claw through her hair, looking down. “Glad I thought of it. Whatever, Kranner and Sundae go get some more gear. Do either one of you know how to outfit a civilian vehicle for a fight?”
Sundae speaks again saying, “No, but I know how to convince someone to.”
Piper nods. “Good, get something high caliber on the car y’all rode in on. Don’t touch mine.”
“We’ll get ours and his set up,” Kranner rasps, gesturing toward Thistle on the ground. “He’s one foot in the grave, anyways. Won’t miss it.”
Piper laughs and crouches beside Thistle, looking him over, poking the side of his face with a claw deep enough to draw blood from beneath his thin, but tough hide. “Oh, Mr. Thistle, can we borrow your car? It’ll only get a lil’ dinged up, promise.”
The rest of them laugh too, until the old man on the floor turns his head. It’s a struggle; the command has to go through layers and layers of sediment, like trying to shove his hand through cotton, but eventually he does manage to cast his eyes up at Piper and work his mouth to say a simple, indignant, “No.”
Silence falls, and it looms heavy above them all until shortly, curtly, Piper tells him, “Wrong answer.”
She grabs Thistle by the leg with one large, clawed hand and tosses him into a cabinet nearby, where the finer plates and dining ware had been kept alongside various little knick knacks. The pain takes a second longer than it should for it to register in his body, but when it does he lets loose a croaking, scraping groan.
The only reason the cabinet falling on him doesn’t end it all there is because Piper smacks it out of her way with her tail before she’s on him again, driving the steel toe boot on her left foot hard into his already heavily bruised and somewhat shattered ribs. The sting and burn of fracturing bones and tearing flesh is muffled under the heavy medication, but it’s real, so viscerally real.
He can’t move. What the screwed dosage hasn’t rendered useless to him is occupied by pain and he’s staring to the side. Boots. Black, steel toe boots, all of them are wearing some. On his floor there are shattered plates and wood chips from the cabinet. Stupid little knick knacks and baubles are there too. A small figurine of a cow stares at him from its faux pasture, a little lump of green atop which the black and white ceramic bovine settles.
He can remember where he got each and every one of those insipid odds and ends, but as stupid as they are he can’t help but feel an extra jab in his gut. Surrounded by gifts and small, pointless treasures given to him by people he says he hates, Hieronymus T. Thistle is soaked not only with his own blood, but his tears as well.
After kicking his ribs until they cave, Piper grabs the cabinet again, shrieks, and crushes him with it.
“Stupid old bastard,” she sighs out, rubbing her face, claws receding and skin smoothing over again. She spits out a heavy glob of venom into the blood pooling on the floor, where it sizzles disgustingly. “Got what was coming to him.”
The four are still standing on the other side of the room, each one awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot. Piper’s head tilts. “What are you still doing here? Go gear up the cars. Nancy, weapon maintenance. Jack… Honestly I don’t know what you can do. Stand watch, I guess. Patrol, do something.”
They all mask up again and get their helmets back on, then head out.
Piper glances around, and something catches her eye, something glinting just a touch. A small ceramic cow on a pitifully small green lump made out to be a pasture. She picks it up, turns it around, and rubs off the blood with her coat sleeve. On the bottom of the green blob is something engraved, shallowly, as though with a pencil prior to the baking process: “To Mr. Thistle,” in the handwriting of someone young. “From Billy,” it reads after that.
She pockets it. “I can sand that off. Janet’s gonna love you.”
“So,” Olive says, breaking the silence in the living room. Jules and Lucille sit across Samson’s living room from her and Leon, and though it’s clear that Leon doesn’t have much to say to them, seeing as how they had attacked the both of them earlier last month, she feels it necessary to break the ice, especially since they’re being let inside and not being told to scram. “Fancy seein’ y’all here again.”
Lucille chuckles, not a trace of amusement in her voice. “Yeah.”
“So. What’s up…?”
“Waiting for your doctor to patch up that girl so I can get my arm and nose checked.”
Olive frowns. “Y’think it’s broken? Your nose, I mean.”
“I know it’s broken,” she replies, cradling her face. “We’re lucky it's not bleeding all over this nice couch.”
“Ah.” The Owl turns to Jules instead, who has slumped into quite the comfortable position in a recliner. He’s more focused in listening in to the conversations happening in the adjacent rooms, especially the one where Brie’s being operated on. “How ‘bout you, Jules?”
“Oh, you know.” He smiles as he faces her, motioning toward his casted-up body. “Peachy keen. I’ll be in decent shape in a couple days, though.”
“How’d all that happen?”
“That guy who’s been following you, Blondie,” Lucille interjects. “Since he couldn’t find you in Fusillade, he went on a rampage. Nearly got the better of us.”
“Shit,” she suddenly grumbles. She darts from the room, holding her good arm under her nose like a leaky ceiling.
The Vampire laughs a little. “By your faces, I’m guessing you didn’t know the bastard was alive.”
And their faces do tell it all. Leon and Olive look at one another with utter disbelief— the former looking as though he doesn’t actually believe the claim, and the latter looking as though she doesn’t want to believe it, but she can’t help her brain accepting it as true right out the gate.
“You know that fried-looking person who walked in with your doctor and the detective?” Jules probes, holding out his free hand. “They’re one of those Notus. Notuses? Notii? Ah, whatever. One of those folks that comes back to life after being killed with fire. Your boy Blondie? He’s one of them too, now.”
“That’s a load of shit,” Leon says.
“Hey, ask anyone else who just got here.”
“There’s no way. We heard an explosion. We saw. An explosion. How the hell could there have been anything left of that guy to reanimate?”
Jules shrugs.
“He got into a fistfight with a fucking Wyrm.”
“Hah!” he laughs, quickly clutching his side in pain. “Don’t make me laugh like that. God, that’s good, though. Did he really?”
“I didn’t catch most of it, but I think a couple of ours did. He wrestled the Fusillade Wyrm. Got it in a headlock and everything.”
“And it exploded.”
Leon laughs back. “You should’ve seen it. Full mushroom cloud, hundreds of feet into the sky. I thought the world was ending.”
“That was scary as hell! I dunno why you’re laughin’, you certainly weren’t laughin’ at the time,” Olive adds.
“It’s funny in retrospect, Olive,” he says. “We were all trying to ignore it at the time. Couldn’t waste any breath gawking.”
Jules scratches his head. “I think I was still on the road with Lucille by that point. I know we heard a boom, but I don’t remember thinking much of it. Speaking of Lucille.” He leans over in his recliner, and yells down the corridor to where the Maw is only just now getting a grip on her nosebleed. “Lucille! Do you need any help?!”
“Don’t try to walk alone!” she yells back. “I told you to stay put!”
“You want me to get the doctor or something?!”
“Are you listening to what I’m saying?”
Jules turns back to Olive and Leon, grinning like a court jester. “Thank goodness. I didn’t want to walk anywhere anyways.”
Judith, Cherry, and Meat find themselves outside on the back patio, after having been moved out of the makeshift operating room due to space reasons.
“Wait, if you know all there is to know about fire magic now,” Cherry asks, who is having the time of his life grilling Meat for their entire life story— or at least, everything they can remember about themselves up until this point. “Does that mean you could teach it?”
Judith holds up her hands in dissent. “Do NOT teach him any spells. Please. That would be a mistake.”
“Why?” Meat asks.
“Because he’s prone to screwing shit up. And giving someone like that the ability to burn down a house isn’t a good idea.”
Meat turns to Cherry as Judith scowls over at him. “She talk about you like this all the time?” He nods, reluctantly. “That’s kinda shitty, lady.”
“Well, it’s the truth. You think I find it fun?”
“You’re fine putting him down in front of a stranger,” Meat says. “That says a lot.”
“Says what, exactly?”
“You’re bitter. I don’t know about what, but you’re bitter.”
Judith scoffs. “I’ll admit that. I am a little bitter.”
“What happened, then?” Meat motions to the two of them. “What’s the problem?”
Neither Judith nor Cherry say a word for a moment. But, after being motioned to by the Werewolf, Cherry pipes up. “I caused an accident and made her lose her hand.”
Meat’s skull tilts just slightly. “How does that happen?”
“Mining machinery.”
“He made a water cutter go haywire. He lost control of it, and it took my hand right off. We couldn’t even put it back on if we wanted,” Judith adds. “That’s how bad it was.”
Meat doesn’t respond, instead looking the Werewolf in the eyes for a solid couple seconds. They give her ample time to realize that the kind of person she’s matching gazes with really isn’t the kind she’d like to challenge. Sure, she’s stressed out and sure, she’s got some very understandable beef with Cherry, but in looking into those burning sockets, she sees someone who really, really shouldn’t be messed with. Someone to whom first impressions are everything, someone whose sense of right and wrong is stronger than their capabilities in magic will ever be. Even though all they’ve got is a skull, she can see the experience written into their expression. And, if she’s honest, it’s a little sobering. It doesn’t stop her from narrowing her eyes at them, readying herself. It’s part frustrated and ventless anger, part cornered animal.
Meat sighs. Initially it seemed like a problem to be solved— that idea’s been corrected. “That’s something you two have to work out, then.”
“Agreed,” Cherry sighs, leaning forward on the picnic bench. “But…” he starts again. “About the magic thing.”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
It’s cold on the roof. The breeze has picked up significantly, but Judith hardly minds, as her head has been placed firmly in a meat grinder on the finest setting.
It makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense at all. Leon’s not a coward. He’s never been a coward. There’s plenty of times that Judith can recall where he’s actively been the aggressor in fights. But he just admitted to something that made him look like the most cowardly person on the planet. By saying nothing, he let Cherry take the fall for something he didn’t do, he let the blame of her having to re-learn how to write, how to eat, how to wipe her own ass, go to that idiot instead.
And she was instantaneously on-board with it. She was so quick to jump down Cherry’s throat, in retrospect, you’d think she’d lost the keys to her house in his trachea. Day in, day out, she’d find herself getting angry at him. Every time she sat down to do something with a hand that wasn’t there, she was reminded of the person she thought had taken her hand from her. And she was ruthless. To a point where even Leon would defend him. And it was all completely misguided. She had verbally shit on Cherry for the past couple months all because of the truth that the person she now feels deeply for had never told her.
But, she can’t muster the anger. Towards either of them, really. Sure, there’s a tiny flame in the back of her throat that’s telling her to scream into the night sky. But, it feels like something’s been uncorked recently. There’s been a release of some kind that’s made her less quick to go berserk.
Maybe it’s him. Though, kickboxing with a true admittance of love for someone isn’t to be taken lightly. A lot of her thoughts have been about him, especially since they got to Pickman’s Hope. With all the downtime, it’s felt nice to be around him. Not just good, or neutral, as though they were the traveling partners from before. It’s been a genuinely good time to just hang around and talk about things. Even if he has been treading into introspective territory recently.
That’s probably why this is happening, isn’t it. Why he decided to come out and say it to her face, right now. It’s because he’s been contemplating things again. Reflecting on things. Which, she must admit, is something she hasn’t been doing much unless it was necessary. Or, unless it was relevant to the grudge she nursed against Cherry. In the latter case, she would make multiple mental notes whenever Cherry had fucked something up, and she would keep them in colour-coded case files against him whenever he had an argument. It would almost be impressive, if it weren’t making her feel so weird.
Is this the person she’s ended up being? A ball-busting blood-feuder? Something that feeds off the misery of someone who’s wronged her (or at least, that she’s perceived as wronged her)? The werewolf overseer with anger issues.
It’s just as that recruiter back at Shepherd Gemstone had profiled her. She didn’t realize it at the time, but he was entirely right to have put her in that specific place with that specific job. He saw what was inside of her, how the position would twist her into exactly what she needed to be. And it worked. She became that person for a long time, and only recently has she had to seriously reckon with that fact.
In a moment of clarity, she vomits up her dinner all over Samson’s front porch canopy and the front of her shirt and some of her hair and she has to struggle to not fall over on her hands into it.
But she won’t be that person anymore. She can’t be. It tastes wrong now.
What Leon did— she’d do the same, especially with how things escalated. Anybody would. It makes sense why he’s admitting to it. There’s something between them now, something that wants to be built.
Judith wipes off her mouth with her sleeve. She needs to level out; she needs a game plan. Something going forward. An agenda. A schedule. She understands that. She can do that.
She’s going to forgive him and place the next brick. That’s the smart thing to do. The right thing. And she’s also going to say sorry to Cherry, since that little— guy, didn’t do anything wrong. Hell, she might as well clean out the whole storage unit of dog-eared memories she has on him. Hope for forgiveness and move on weight-free. The plan is simple, and though it takes her a moment to get her legs stable again, she turns around to peek over the back porch.
Both Cherry and Leon have clearly been staring up there since she cleared her stomach, with varying degrees of genuine concern on their faces. She comes down in the span of a blink and stands before the two of them, just looking.
“Leon,” she starts, slowly turning her head toward him. “Can you come here?”
Visibly confused, he stands up from his seat. “Did you just puke?”
“Yeah, come here.”
“Jesus Judith, we need to get you a clean change of—” but before he can finish his sentence, he’s dragged toward Judith by the shirt, receiving easily one of the sloppiest, foulest kisses one can receive from a romantic interest ever recorded.
“I love you. And I forgive you,” she says after pulling away from him. Ignoring as he instinctively runs to the bathroom to scrub his tongue dry, she turns to Cherry. “And you.”
He holds his arms up in a cross. “Oh, no. I don’t know you like that, Judith. And you’ve just—”
“No, Cherry. I’m just sorry with you.”
“Sorry?”
“Yeah. I think I’d have to say it a thousand times with all the shit I’ve put you through, but I’m starting today. I’m sorry.”
He takes a moment to process this. A long moment, the kind that you’d expect would come along with a dial-up noise or a bad, distorted track of on-hold jazz. And at the end of that moment, he stands up from his seat as well, only to hesitate once again.
“You know, I’d hug you right now if I thought it wouldn’t ruin my clothes,” Cherry says. Instead, he extends a hand. “So I’ll settle for this.”
Without thinking, Judith shakes it. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep saying it. It’s okay.”
“Deal.”
Leon comes back into the room, pointing at Judith. “You need a shower. Or a bath. Or a hose down. You look terrible, god, I’m gonna have to hose off Sam’s roof aren’t I?”
The next five days are uncomfortably calm; each one passes without event, so improbably serene that only Cherry doesn’t notice, and that’s wholly because this sort of pleasant nothing is strikingly familiar. This is what those in Honeysett, as well as those around him now, in Pickman’s Hope, call normalcy.
Five days pass in which the lot of them aren’t attacked, they aren’t given any strange new revelations, and they aren’t forced to endure any new interpersonal reckonings. An actual, factual breather. A moment of respite among the strange and intense events that had been imposing themselves upon their lives, and a span of time allowing for so many to do the normal things normal people do.
In that time, dates occur. Normal dates, the ones where one takes their lover to eat, drink, and dance, where they watch a musical performance— admittedly a local and, while entirely pleasant, not entirely memorable set of people with instruments and a dream— or perhaps even a play, if they’re that set on having some nothing happen around them as their world shrinks and twists to be occupied only by those they bring and themselves. Such is the case for Leon and Judith, who take three of the five days to go on various dates to different venues starring performances they aren’t going to remember, all paid for from a small offshoot of the emergency funds Judith had so long ago partitioned out from their main funding. She currently calls this their “entertainment” budget, and it’s almost exclusively spent on the two’s drinks and various other small affections.
A markedly smaller amount of time is spent complaining between the two of them than is typical of their time together, but one can chalk that up to the grace period after the beginning of a relationship where everything is right with the world and the two are so flagrantly attempting to make up for some strange semblance of lost time— filled with the assumed ungodly saccharine and unironic platitudes one can drum up in the average hormonal teen diary— that people leave them alone due to a mysterious force that bats any would-be facade shatterers far, far away. Again, such is the case with Leon and Judith as, for once, the rest of the group give them their time and space. When they’re not out and about, they’re inside, curled up together, making snarky but not entirely malicious remarks about the world or exchanging fluff— or sucking face, from time to time.
It would be endearing if it weren’t almost always on the couch beside the recliner Jules has been more or less trapped in for the week, and while Lucille’s happy to provide her best friend company she’s not interested in watching an Orc and a Werewolf eat each other’s heads. So, the first day he’s stuck, alone, enduring the fact that the space he’s occupying is the only area inside the house where the two lovebirds aren’t going to be bothered by anyone else and aren’t bothering anyone, with Jules and Lucille being ruled out of the category of “people we actually mind bothering” due to their incredibly off-base calculations. Essentially, Leon’s rubbing their noses in it, and nobody’s about to try and stop him.
However, by day two Jules is at least able to hobble with Lucille somewhere else, leaving that room entirely to Judith and Leon whenever they’re at Samson’s.
Without much else to do, Jules and Lucille simply bum around the house and seek out brief, awkward conversation; aside from Brie, Meat, Samson, and Olive, few are all that receptive to the idea of a prolonged conversation with the two and generally avoid them, especially when, around the third day, they begin worrying when not only Blondie would strike, but when Piper would make another move.
The opinions are split; Brie has every intention to prepare and set up strategies for the inevitable attack, which has actually been on her mind since the moment she woke up all bandaged after her one-sided altercation with Piper. She spends the five days poring over maps of the town, even the blueprints of Samson’s house, and even takes professional advice from the two. After all, they were in the same boat as her.
Meat’s not particularly interested in long, drawn out conversations with people who’ve tried to kill them for a second time, but there’s at least some bonding over the events in Fusillade, and between them and Jules there are a good few jokes on the matter of the Carnevale. They know how to handle a fight and, despite suggestions to the contrary, find no reason to take advice from Jules or Lucille, and only offer advice when prodded by Brie to explain the fire magic, not under the assumption she’d try to use any but as fuel for her developing strategy to fight Blondie.
But, nevertheless, the conversation usually goes something like this—
“Is he here yet?” Meat asks, adjusting the straps on their ramshackle, brick-based shoewear. Constructed, of course, to make sure that they don’t singe any more holes into Samson’s nice hardwood floorboards.
“Is anything on fire yet?” Lucille replies.
“I am.”
“I mean the town. Last time he was around, he burnt down half of Fusillade.”
Jules interjects, “And, people around us started dying. Dunno about anyone else in town. Best bet would be to wait for the fire sirens to start going off.”
“Uh huh. Brie,” Meat turns to the recovering Detective, “when do you think he’ll get here?”
“In theory, he could be here already,” Brie says. “Simply waiting for us to drop our guard, so that he could make a move. But, that theory is a bit flimsy, as Blondie doesn’t seem to be the kind of murderer who would wait for an opportunity. He seems more akin to an opportunity maker.”
“And speaking of making opportunities,” Lucille starts, holding up a hand, “when are you going to tell us what your deal is, Meat?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Their head tilts and their shoulders roll back.
“The more we know about you the more we can expect to understand about Blondie. Far as we know, you two have the same powers. Can you blow shit up?”
“Yeah.”
Lucille frowns. “Okay, how?”
“Magic. You wouldn’t get it.”
“That’s not helpful.”
Jules raises his hand as well. “Listen, we don’t need to know how. Is there anything you think he could pull out his sleeve to fuck us over?”
Meat thinks about this for a moment. “No. If I’m around, I can cancel anything he does.”
“And what if you’re not around?”
“Don’t get hit.”
Jules snorts. “God, I’m sure you were fun to run jobs with back in the gang.”
“I’m just telling it like it is.”
“You think that’s why Leslie had it out for you?”
“I can’t remember. But it might be.” Meat cracks a slight smile. “I’m done talking about this. Let me know if anything comes up, Brie.”
Samson has an actual life to live filled with awkward administration, walks through the neighborhood, and talks with his old pals, so Jules and Lucille get precious little time with the wolfhound, though in the brief moments they converse it’s plain to them both that he most certainly understood their position. Being a former adventurer and a freelancer himself, otherwise known as being a mercenary, he knows well enough the temptations of the open road and a good weapon, the joys and pains of riding after the wind and letting it feed him. It’s a little poetic and uncomfortably nostalgic for the two, but through this they manage to at least draw out some level of strategy, as at their suggestion he takes to getting the local volunteers in the fire department to be on high alert for the time being. If there are going to be fires, the town will be prepared.
It’s then that the two are left with Olive for company, and by proxy, due to Azariah’s preoccupation with Roxanne and Samson, Cherry too.
After everything, Cherry can’t help but be overly helpful as Olive prods them with professional questions. Cherry asks if they need anything to drink, Olive asks how the two go and select their gear, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. It’s like babysitting, except neither Jules nor Lucille are getting paid for this in anything except some decently cooked meals that fail to satisfy.
One day, while Cherry was working on the truck, Lucille decided to snoop around on a whim— nearly scaring the Techie into cracking his forehead on the underside of the dash.
“Shit, sorry,” she says, holding out an assisting hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he replies. Cherry wipes his forehead clean, sitting upright in the driver’s seat. “Uh, what’s up… Lou, uh.”
“Lucille. Just being nosy, that’s all.”
“Oh, alright. Thought you might’ve had some bad news, or something.”
Lucille frowns underneath her face wrappings. “Not right now. This is the junker you used to get out of Fusillade before us?”
“Sure is,” Cherry beams, “old girl had more spring in her step than I imagined. Whoever had her last took pretty dang good care of her.”
“Reminds me of some stuff I’d see back up north. Fewer sharp edges, though.”
“Up north? You mean—”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Holy shit,” he mumbles. “Wow, that’s crazy. I bet some of the machines you saw could tear up dirt like nothing else. Tundra-based mechanics are off the wall.”
Lucille finds herself raising a brow. “You know that the biofuel they invented was originally an execution tool?” When Cherry’s jaw hits the floor, she laughs, and continues, “Yeah. Back when New Bird was first getting formed, one of the nomad groups had come up with a recipe for fuel that’d burn hotter and faster than anything else you could scavenge normally. They’d use it to roast people in seconds. Now that they’ve been united, folks found out that it could still be used for racing.”
“Hell yeah it can. I’ve seen some guys’ machines hit nearly two-hundred while juiced on that stuff. God, that’s pretty messed up, though.”
She pats the Techie on the arm. “Everything up there has a bad history. Especially the people.”
“Did the races used to be to the death or something, too?! I mean, not to make you dig back up some bad memories or anything,” Cherry holds up his hands, “but considering that, like you said, there’s some bad stuff up there. And you mentioned pointy bits. I know you can put spikes on car rims and stuff to shred other tires. But I bet there’s plenty of ways to make a car more lethal than it is.”
“I never got into any of that crap,” she replies, leaning up against the chassis. “Yeah, the races used to be a form of competitive goodwill between gangs that could tolerate one another. It wasn’t much of a circuit, and people would always die in the process, but the spirit was there. If you wanna call it spirit. More like bloodlust and adrenaline.”
“And then, it turned to just the normal races once New Bird was founded, right? Well, they’re not normal races at all from what I’ve heard. Have you heard the stories too? About the machines they’d build for those races? And how far they’d go out? How many people’d show up to the events?” Cherry asks, eyes full of stars.
“Makes the spots out here look like go-kart rinks.”
“What I’d give to go out there and see one.”
“Hey, maybe you will someday. When the roads are safer, hopefully. That’s not a fun trip.” Lucille stops, scratches the top of her head, and then turns her gaze to the truck again. “Is this thing prepped to handle combat? If you’re driving over rough terrain, can someone reasonably stand inside and use a weapon without worrying about getting knocked off?”
Cherry’s lips purse as his mind drifts, and after gently running his hand against the vehicle he nods. “I think it’ll be fine unless we hit top speed, or other unrelated potential problems.”
“I’d appreciate some confirmation on possible problems. Anything in mind?”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I know it better than my house at this point.”
Roxanne well and should be as anxious as Brie over the eventual, seemingly inevitable arrival of Blondie and Piper, but she finds herself meaningfully distracted by her jackrabbit. Azariah, ever the charmer, refuses to let her stew in her anxiety and, like a recently rejuvenated yet still much older version of Leon and Judith’s sophomoric dates, the two head out and about to enjoy themselves while they can and when they aren’t pestering Samson. Dancing’s awkward, but the two manage; Azariah can overcompensate for her loss of limb by simply sweeping her off of them, twirling her around with a sort of strength he hasn’t shown her since before that first fight with the big white wolf.
“The longer I keep goin’, the harder it gets to act like my best nights are behind me.”
“Hey, that’s a good sign.” Samson smiles, standing on the front lawn with the old Hare, and after his sentence ends the both of them go silent. With one eye shut and the other narrowed, the hound gently lobs a horseshoe into position. It spins almost lovingly around the iron peg that they jammed into the turf an hour ago. “Yer best nights are ahead of you. Means things are lookin’ up, pal.”
Azariah snorts, tossing a horseshoe and landing it just on top of Samson’s. “That so? I thought the best years were back closer to when we spawned.”
“Nah, don’t believe the nostalgia. Your knees might not bend as good and your hands might not grip as tight, but I’ll tell you what, I don’t mind it none. Look around and tell me what ya see.”
Running his eyes along the yard, across gardens and a beaten up but cared for street, across houses about as uniform as the folks who live in them, Azariah sighs. “I see a lot. My eyes aren’t goin’ yet, Sam.”
“Come on now, that ain’t the point. Look at them folks. This is peace and community, Azariah. I might miss knocking skulls with you, and I might miss slaying Monsters with my old pals who’ve all gone and wandered into their own lives, but I wouldn’t give this up for another night as some pup with a fencepost for a sword. I might’ve had more reliable fingers, but that can take a back seat to some pumpkin wine and sweet tea. ‘Sides, we weren’t very good men in our youth. No point in missing that.”
“You were better’n me, that’s for sure,” the Hare mumbles. “Don’t know how you and Roxanne stood me for so long.”
“Don’t know, then again, I don’t know a lotta things. You an’ Rox on right now?”
“Think so, maybe. I think we might be on for good now, all considered. After what happened, I don’t think I could bring myself to leave her again, barrin’ certain possibilities.”
Samson turns. His eyebrows, heavy as they are, still manage to raise themselves in some kind of concern. “God, you’re really gonna try it, aren’t ya?”
“I’ll win.”
“You don’t sound certain. Y’know, I bet y’all could run. Just take Roxanne and get out of here. I’ll keep the kids safe.”
“They ain’t my kids.”
“You act like they are. Both of you do. Roxanne’s come close to throttling me over me fat-fingering that crowbar the gal was stuck with. I’m sure you’d take a swing if I even came close to harming a hair on any of their heads.”
Azariah rolls his shoulders, and he smiles. “Keep throwin’ horseshoes, old timer.”
Another soft ring of metal on metal; the horseshoe comes to rest on top of the previous two. “You don’t have to fight. Took me a lifetime of it to realize you don’t have to.”
“I understand. I ain’t doin’ it to prove anythin’ to anybody. I don’t have anythin’ to prove anymore, just folks to protect. If they run, I run. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they all get out alright.”
Samson laughs loud and hard, grinning as he pulls his belt loops a bit higher, adjusting his pants. “Well, be careful. Do anything reckless and you’re liable to break my heart. Who’ll I get to play mandolin with the boys during parties?”
“I’m not gettin’ the mandolin out ‘less you get the spoons.”
“Ain’t played spoons in years, Azariah. I graduated to washboard.”
Roxanne laughs behind them, and the two turn their heads to watch her settle into a chair on the front porch. “Are you two out here talking philosophy again?”
“Dog’s gotta howl,” Samson says. “Ain’t much to do but chew some fat and enjoy the taste. You two busy tomorrow?”
“Naw.” Azariah smiles at Roxanne, and she returns it tiredly. “I think she’s a mite danced out, so we’re probably just gonna spend tomorrow doin’ somethin’ low energy.”
She scoffs. “I’m not the magically infused one. If you’d like to drag him to something exhausting, go ahead, but he’s done a damn good job of running me ragged.” Still, despite the words, the tone is sweet.
Samson snuffles. “Aw hell, it’s just like the old days. I’m thinking I might be about to cry.”
“You’re about to lose at horseshoes,” Azariah points out. “Why’d you wanna know what we were doin’ tomorrow?”
“Billy wants to go fishing with some of the old heads. I think it’d be fun. You’re welcome to come, and so’s Roxanne, if you don’t think fishing is too intense for your bones?” Asking this, Samson’s gaze runs from Azariah to Roxanne, and his smile is too wide, too intense for either of them to watch for long without their own smiles threatening to split into grins.
“We’ll come,” Roxanne replies. “Of course, just make sure you buy an extra case of beer.”
On the final day, Piper and company are moving out of the deceased Mr. Thistle’s house, leaving it an empty hollow. They’re preparing to find a new base of operations, her and Kranner, with Sundae and Nancy in tow for negotiations, or “negotiations,” until Jack arrives, breathing heavy, from a long and winding recon patrol.
“I have new information, ma’am, but I don’t think you’re going to enjoy hearing it,” he says to her, standing straight again and dusting himself off.
“Give me the good news first.”
“On my way around town I found the place where Blondie’s been hiding.” With a heavy, metallic sigh he draws a finger to point out toward the southeast. “He was squatting in the woods just south of town.”
Piper’s eyebrows raise. “Was?”
Jack nods. “That’s where we get to what you don’t want to hear.”
It’s an hour or so until sundown on the fifth day, and everyone’s come back for dinner. That’s when the heavy freight truck fueling station down near the south end of town blows up.
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
The Bleeding Scab isn’t the best place to lie low and wait out a quarry, but it’s chaotic enough to cover up the fact that Piper, Jules, and Lucille are very obviously not from around there. Most of the workers busy themselves with their own pockets of enjoyment, so the three oddballs just fade into the corner of the room; especially since they don’t plan on renting a room, nor are they on payroll to be accompanying potential renters. Instead, as Lucille awkwardly sits in her section of the booth with Jules right beside her, picking away awkwardly at some local type of blood sausage— not the sort of blood he needed, but fangs are meant for meat— Piper simply presses heavy spoonfuls of a thick, sludgy soup into her mouth, watching the people move and talk, her tail wrapping around the center pole of the table between them.
They’re nestled into a far corner with easy visibility of the main bar and the front entrance. Anyone who seems to notice them is disquieted by a combination of Piper’s glare, Jules’s grin, and Lucille’s covered mouth, and anyone who doesn’t is too busy going about their business. In a sense, they stick out. But, sticking out just enough to discomfort is, in itself, a fairly good way to camouflage yourself. To lack the comfort of familiarity and the novelty of strangeness both is to convince the viewer not to view at all, and is thus a good way to hide in plain sight.
The fine details of this method, something Jules and Lucille have utilized time and time again to simply wait for their quarry in a populous gathering space and then pounce at the last second, are somewhat lost on Piper. Her shoulders shift and roll to ease the tension, she tilts her head to crack her neck, and after a time the spoon settles into the bottom of the solidifying muck she had called a meal some moments earlier as she’s taken to popping each knuckle on each hand individually, slowly and methodically. Her tail twitches. As though simply to elicit some response, the tip drifts against Lucille’s leg.
This whole time, Lucille’s been staring past her companions and into the sea of people also. She’s careful not to think too hard on the way the moving of boots and feet in this place reminds her painfully of the hustle and bustle of camps in the past, or how the roaring laughter of these people, likely celebrating a finished house or some other project, echoes against those she had once called her peers. The Snake’s touch against her leg is only registered after it gets firmer and runs up her calf, when Lucille nudges it away with her boot.
Piper smirks. “I’m bored,” she says, running a finger along the rim of her bowl. “How long does this usually take?”
“It isn’t always high octane chases or intense stakeouts. Sometimes it’s just sitting in some greasy spoon waiting for somebody to show up.” Lucille’s head tilts. Her eyes linger on Piper’s own golden pair as her jaw sets.
Jules chuckles. “We’re hunters, right. Which means, Pip, that you have to learn to treat the target like they’re animals. Complicated, complex animals, but animals. Shit, that analogy doesn’t really work, huh. Think brutal reality shit, you get me.”
A grin crosses its way over Piper’s features, but she doesn’t respond to him. She’s a bit busy breaking her gaze from the staredown to follow the familiar shapes of Brie and Roxanne, accompanied by the unfamiliar Meat as they plow through the entrance and straight to the front counter. Roxanne swiftly places down a bundle of cash, raises a small ruckus, and is handed a key by the bartender. Once the charade’s complete, the three dart up the stairs and into the hall where the rented rooms reside, just as two more shapes enter.
The two figures approach the bartender, and just from a cursory glance Piper has some idea that they aren’t locals, given as one of them— a tall man, made of literal stone with small streaks of metal throughout his face and bald head like tattoos— is wearing a black suit and a horrendously patterned tie that speaks to having been picked up either in the home of an insane clothier or a low-grade alchemical mentor. The swirling red, blue, green and electric cyan patterns are hard to look at.
The other, an orc, isn’t wearing a suit but his clothes are simple, crisp, and very obviously mass produced; he’s from a real city. On top of his head is a flat cap, chequered, black and white. Similarly, his t-shirt is a simple black, his jeans white, et cetera, over his green skin.
Combined they cut a fearsome silhouette, a mountain of a man made of rock and iron glaring, stone-faced, as an Orc of nearly equal stature cracks and rolls his knuckles as though preparing a weapon. On the Golem’s lapel is a pin, and even from a distance Jules knows the symbol it bears well; after all, Leslie Carnevale wears it all the time and so do the properly initiated members of the crew, as it’s the sign of the family. The Orc isn’t wearing one, but he probably has one, Jules thinks.
Based solely on looks, he can assume who they are. There isn’t any shortage of rocky muscle in the organization but rather few get to the point where they start buying expensive suits; shows this isn’t just some brick-headed associate out to crack skulls. This is a soldier, sure, not a capo like Leslie, but give him a few years and a few more busted heads and he’s going to get there.
The Orc, he knows. Normally the guy works an entirely different track; he’s an urban collector, a soldier who doesn’t work for Leslie and probably already misses the man-made mountains and jungles of concrete, wood, and steel back in the city. Wide at the shoulders and tight at the hips, he’s practically threatening to bust that shirt open during a fight. It’d be attractive if Jules didn’t know the moment the guy gets going things are only going to hurt.
Grant “The Slab” Slate and “Lucky” Luciano. Professionals, even a little above Jules’ paygrade. Leslie’s pulling out all the stops to deal with this Notus. Someone who might be fireproof and somebody willing to put hands on a campfire. Sensible, but it stings a little to know he’s been outmoded for the moment.
The bartender doesn’t tell them anything, and unfortunately for Grant and Lucky, this isn’t a place where they can bust out pieces and have the run of the joint; the moment either one of them pulls a gun on a local, the rest’ll tear them apart. They didn’t account for Jules being there, though.
Some part of him does feel a little bad for the brief wave and the vague gesture pointed toward the stairs up, as that Meat person didn’t seem all too bad when they weren’t trying to kill one another, but family’s family, even if he himself is taking a break from it to keep rolling with his best friend to get a job done. It’s all quick, professional, and mostly painless.
Frustrated, the two goons look around. They eventually spot someone who’s entirely willing to make eye contact with them— that being Jules— who quickly and vaguely points toward the stairs nearby with a slight nod of his head. Then comes another gesture, the slight tapping of his fingers, still only using his good hand, against his chest in the spot where, were he to wear one, he would place a Carnevale pin on his jacket, mirroring the placement of Grant’s on his suit.
Daylight gangsters, the sort with very public facing personas, get pretty good at interpreting that kind of message. It’s easy enough; the two’s quarry had gone upstairs and the gray-faced and messed up looking fellow in the far corner saw, and not only that but also has connections to the family. Had they a few more minutes they’d probably find out that this fellow is, in fact, the guy whose job they just took, but they’re too busy. Instead, there’s a brief nod in response before the two storm up the stairs and past some working men and women, off to start busting down doors.
As the two disappear upstairs, Lucille turns to Jules and lets out a sigh. “Was that needed?”
“Even if I’m off that job, it’s good to stay on people’s good sides. Also, hell, at least one of those guys is on the up and up, and it never hurts to be in with somebody like that.” A fanged smile greets her from beneath a thick and recently combed mustache.
“And who’re they?” Piper asks, eyes still lingering on the staircase, mind elsewhere.
“I think a word for it is “coworkers.” People who’ve dedicated much more to the- er- family than I have.”
“Mafia goons,” Lucille adds. “Doesn’t matter, we’ve got other people to wait for. It’s just a matter of time.”
Piper’s lips purse, and the three go silent and wait for a few minutes more before she finally rises from her seat saying, “I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Are you?” Lucille raises her gaze to Piper’s face again, narrowing her eyes.
“Does it matter?”
“Would you be lying to us if it didn’t?”
As Piper adjusts her coat collar and sets her jaw, she shrugs. “Suppose so. Either way— you two stay here and watch for those idiots, and don’t go starting any scenes.” And then she’s off, walking right past the sign directing those inside the bar toward the restrooms and she’s heading up, heading after the two she’d seen and the three runners.
Brie’s legs want to give out after so much running and the intensity of the standoff inside the room. Her hand’s on the semiautomatic in her bag, and her eyes are focused narrowly on those of the green skinned fellow in a flat cap who’s only just barely keeping his muscled frame from pouncing on Meat who is, at this very moment, literally butting heads with a golem that’s looming over them like a bent tower.
Roxanne’s got the crossbow out, of course, but she’s not in a position for it to be terribly useful; fact is she’s not got a good shot on the Orc and the Golem is, again, made of rock. Even if it’d punch into him, he’d probably just pull it out. While the room had been something of a good bet to hide in, it’s the last place she wants to be in a real fight, especially when she can’t shoot worth a damn at this range and Meat can’t make any sparks fly for fear of lighting the whole town up. Only Brie’s got free range in this room, and even then, she’s not likely to pull the trigger.
“Mack.” The Golem’s voice is slow and heavy, deliberate like the placement of a statue. Every syllable is a perfectly placed brick. “You’re a real long way from home.”
Meat’s brow chafes somewhat from rubbing against stone and metal, as they press their neck and shoulders forward and they stand on the ball of their feet to shove their bony forehead against that of Grant. “I’m not Mack anymore. I’m not in the mood to be explaining this to people I might’ve once known, but I’m not Mack. I stopped being Mack a while ago, and if anybody calls me that again I am going to—”
“Meat,” Brie chimes in, “I do not think attempting to intimidate someone twice your size is going to do much. Sir, please do not call them Mack. They prefer Meat.”
“We come here to tussle or we come here to have tea?” Lucky spits, nose scrunching as he shoots a glare Brie’s way. “Meat, Mack, either way ends the same. Been waiting to take a swing at you for a while…”
Grant raises a hand, then stands back to his full height. “Don’t be a bitch, Lucky. Alright, Meat, I’ll call you that. Still, job’s a job.”
Meat’s arms cross, and their teeth clatter as they work their jaw wordlessly for a second. Then comes an idea, something quick and simple. “We can’t fight here. I don’t know either of you, or at least I don’t anymore, but I get a feeling you two don’t want to have too much… Collateral.”
“What, these two?” Lucky gives a quick glance over the two women before he laughs. “What’s it matter?”
Grant scowls over at him. “Shut your face, Lucky.” Afterward, he turns to look at Meat again. “You sound like you’re about to make a proposition. If it’s happening, out with it.”
“I… Uh…” Meat stops. They didn’t actually think they were going to get this far. Flying by the seat of your pants is good for a fight, but it’s not quite there as conversational tactics go.
Brie steps forward, putting up both hands in a supplicating gesture. “They are technically still working for the Carnevale. It would be in bad taste to kill a coworker before they finish their job, yes?”
“That’s it, I’m gonna shove my hand down this—” Lucky starts, stepping toward her before a large, suit-clad arm stops him.
Grant’s cold, stoic face turns to watch Brie as he says to her, “Explain.”
Meat steps back some, and Roxanne lowers her crossbow as Brie smooths out her pants and readjusts her collar. “Back in Fusillade, your employer tasked Meat with defeating the other Notus, the one known as “Blondie,” whom they— we— are currently pursuing. Blondie was not defeated in Fusillade and thus, the job is unfinished. Obviously Mr. Carnevale expects this to have been finished by the time you arrived, assuming that is who hired you in the first place.”
The Golem and the Orc exchange looks. A small, almost entirely insignificant smile pulls at the corners of Grant’s lips. “Convincing. Stupid, but very convincing. I need more than a technicality to make letting you three go worth it.”
“Unless you can beat a five-figure paycheck,” Lucky breaks in, “I don’t expect anything like this to be worth it. Let’s just kill ‘em.” Though he says this, his hands are already lowered, pressed into his pockets.
Meat rolls their shoulders. “I can’t beat five figures… Let me help them beat this Blondie guy, though. I’ll owe you one. From what I’ve gathered, that’s worth a lot. Apparently my death’s worth that paycheck.”
“And you already stood up again after that Dragon incident. No telling if you’ll stand back up after what we’d do to you, but I guess that can’t be helped. You should’ve stuck to the family life, Meat. You’re good at it. Dealing and all that. You too, sister.” Grant nods, first toward Meat and then toward Brie before he says to Lucky, “I think a favor might come in handy later on. Don’t be too sore over the check, it’ll make you look bad.”
“For a rock, you’re soft as shit.” Lucky snarls, but as everything settles, even his muscles relax.
All just in time for the door to open again and something long to swing out, lashing at the back of Grant’s knees. Unprepared, the giant of a man is sent to the ground, only catching himself by his hands on the floor. By this point another figure’s entered the room and, stepping neatly over the grounded Grant, closes the distance with Lucky.
He’s better prepared. When something bronze and long swings out, lashing toward his face, he catches it between his calloused hands as though clapping his palms to either side of a long blade. Only in the brief moment of calm after it’s stopped in his hands does he realize— it’s not a weapon, it’s a scaly tail. Before he can capitalize on this knowledge, as his soft, blue eyes dart up to gauge the enemy, his vision finds itself blotted out.
Brie, Meat, and Roxanne are dumbfounded as Piper, her tail trapped between the hands of the Orc, just having tripped up Grant, pulls out something strange, some abomination of a weapon derived from strains of crowbar, tonfa, and club. She already had it out by the time she entered, and by the point of her tail making contact with Lucky’s hands she’s spinning it. Now, as Lucky finally looks at her, looks her in the eyes, she’s carving a ragged arc from one side of his head to the other, the pointed, clawed crowbar end of the weapon digging in through one cheek and through his back teeth, through one of his tusk-like canines, and full through the other cheek.
Lucky expects a fight, something real and intense, life or death. He doesn’t expect to be absolutely stunned with cold, shooting pain as he attempts to hold his jaw where it should be on his skull. Blood sputters from his open cheeks and down his neck onto his black shirt and hands, and his attempts to speak only come out as muffled, muted gurgles. His nigh perfect stance from moments ago is ruined as he attempts to back away, tripping and falling as he continues to clutch at his face. He’s been stabbed, shot, clawed, bitten— but this is new. This is so horrifyingly new.
Roxanne’s breathing fast and awkward, partially out of an instinctive fear, secondarily out of a learned, familiar resentment. She’s realized by now that this isn’t Blondie, it’s just his coat being worn by that foreman, Piper. But that’s just enough to send her brain into panic mode, send phantom pains shooting through her missing foot. And that’s only the beginning of her troubles. It’s one thing to be used to seeing viscera in a medical context; it’s something else entirely to watch somebody lose bits and pieces of their face to a glorified pry bar.
Meat’s been unsure of what to do this entire time. Admittedly, not having to owe him anything would be really, really nice. However, if the guy was willing to let them actually talk it out then they weren’t that bad— and if they weren’t going to condemn themselves for having been a member of the Carnevale, it’d be real hypocritical to let this guy die just because of that. And furthermore, they remember Brie’s worries. Is Brie next?
Brie’s frozen. Inside herself, she’s shut down. The time has come. To struggle is pointless when in the face of this brutality. She hadn’t gotten to see Blondie do such things, only having seen the aftermath for the most part, save for that man that Blondie’d burned to death back in Fusillade at the start of the fight, but she’s seeing it now, in Piper. And God, it’s coming for her next.
As Meat moves to place themselves between Piper and Brie, Piper’s gaze, wild and absent of expression, like the glazed but attentive stare of a predator, passes them over in favor of Grant, who’s trying to struggle his way to his feet again. Being a big man means being hard to topple when he’s ready, but if he’s caught off guard then it’s going to be a while as he gets back up.
When he’s finally on his own two feet again, a strange whistling enters his ears, like something spinning faster and faster, metal clawing the air, leather on leather. His eyes run up in time for the already bloodied metal claw on the heavy end of the weapon to strike down on his bald head.
Now everything’s ringing, swimming, and there’s trickling. Like a stream descending a mountain cliff, blood trickles between the crags and crevices in his face from the place she’d struck him. He bellows deeply, but is silenced as the whistling twirl of the weapon collides with his head again, and then again, each strike pushing him down further and further.
Each song-like swing of hardened steel finds itself a sickening, climactic crunch to cap it off. Again and again she strikes, panting, grinning now. In Piper’s mind, she’s calculating the perfect position to strike to chip more and more away. It’s just mining. Instead of groundwater, though, it’s blood.
Meat calms down alongside Roxanne, who by this point is awkwardly clutching at them and saying, “Please stop her, Meat,” between her steadily calming breaths.
Before anything can be said in response, Brie pushes out from behind the both of them and shoves herself into Piper’s path, raising her arms to take the next blow meant for the Golem now on the ground. It doesn’t land, though; Piper stops her movements, and in that second her features contort grotesquely with rage and confusion.
“If you are here for me,” Brie says, a slight tremble in her voice, “then hurt me! Don’t hurt anyone else!”
Piper glances around the room. Lucky’s clutching at his face still, looking distant and pale, and Grant’s on the floor with a good chunk of rock missing from his head, bleeding profusely but obviously not dead. Hell, she was pretty sure she only gave him the Golemnic equivalent of a concussion, or maybe a bit of internal bleeding if she’s really fortunate. Meat and Roxanne are both gawking at her like idiots but obviously they’d try to take her on if she did anything.
A smile and an almost eerily serene posture take over Piper then, and though her black coat, her weapon, and a bit of her face are all splattered with blood, she looks like she hadn’t even exerted herself. “I’m not here to hurt you, Brie.”
Brie’s arms lower and, in her confusion, she blinks. “You’re not? Then why—”
“To protect you. We wouldn’t want anything happening to our number monkeys, right? Especially not one working directly for Ms. Hickory.” A bloody, gloved hand reaches up to grip Brie’s chin. “You should be careful. They don’t like folks like us around here. We have to stick together.”
Brie’s eyes are wide and her face is hot, hot with anger and dread and all things confusing to the logical mind. “How can you be so candid after hurting them like that?” She snaps, immediately. “Look at what you did! It is all so— so needlessly cruel!”
Piper chuckles, and that hand on Brie’s chin pats her cheek before the snake turns to walk out. “Shit, write it all down in your lil’ notebook and get along with your job. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to your rescue after all. There are better things to do than protect people that ain’t even going to give me so much as a thank you.” On her way out she snags one of the several extra blankets, and as she walks out she takes the time to wipe off the blood. Luckily enough for her, the coat’s been treated— blood doesn’t stick. Blondie thought of everything when ordering these things.
In the room Brie is huffing, face vividly darkened by a flush, face for once twisted heavily in some semblance of fury. She only comes out of some hidden, angry place in the back of her mind as Meat snaps in front of her face. “Hey, I know this isn’t a great time, but Roxanne needs our help moving the gangsters.”
“As in, I need you two to drag them downstairs so that the locals can handle the rest. We have to see Sam.”
Getting the two gangsters situated in the clinic was no easy task, but the working folk of the Bleeding Scab brought forth everything they could muster to help. Roxanne found herself impressed, and somewhat missing that kind of community with her fellow folk. There’s nothing quite like the feel of everyone dropping their beers when someone’s in dire need.
But, the job isn’t finished. As she exits the clinic to a rather overwhelmed Brie and a notably on-edge Meat, she says, “There’s someone we’ve got to see. Let’s get a move on before anything else happens, yes?” Brie attempts to raise a hand, but Roxanne just replies, “We can process what happened in a bit, Ms. Brie. Right now, we’ve got to get to my friend. He’ll know what to do about all this.”
“Where to?” Meat says, eyeing the streets suspiciously.
“Samson’s place. He’s the union head here, and he’ll know how to drive Piper out, now that she’s here.” The Medic starts to walk, taking Brie’s hand as she passes by. “Keep up now, you two. We’ll be safe, but I don’t want either of you getting lost.”
Covered in grease but satisfied with his inspection and installation of the Pounder nitrous canister into the truck, Cherry pushes himself out from underneath the vehicle, dragging his toolbelt along with him. Now, if he’s done everything correctly, the button on the side of the middle control panel should work for a last-ditch burst of speed.
Though, as if on-queue, Cherry had noticed something odd while working on the truck. Since he had become so familiar with the vehicle’s inner workings, he had slowly begun the process of trying out his power on it. Unscrewing and rescrewing nuts, lifting parts off the pavement for insertion into tight spaces, and other such activities that had tired him out after a while. In fact, after he had finished, he had a thought— since his power seems to consider the process of moving things as a function of building, could he, in theory, move more than one component at once?
To his surprise, he could see it happening in his mind when he closed his eyes. A wireframe map of the truck had been built in his headspace, and when he felt for a section, he could feel it begin to move slightly under his influence. Of course, this was about as strenuous as trying your hardest to lift a screwed-on piece of machinery from its frame, but nonetheless, all he had to do was wipe a bit of blood from his nose before heading inside.
That is, before Roxanne showed up in Samson’s yard with Brie and someone else.
Brie and Meat stand back from the scene, waiting on the front lawn of a rather well-kept house. They watch Roxanne embrace the Hare and the human covered in motor oil sitting out on the front porch, who Brie correctly assumes to be the ones she’s been hunting this entire time, and soon after, hug the massive Hound who walks out as well. There’s brief, but fervent conversation— something about being followed to town, something about a pair of gangsters, something about Shepherd Gemstone. That last bit perks up the Hound right away, and both Brie and Meat watch as his hand naturally gravitates toward his hip. The Owl standing next to them also becomes visibly nervous, and again, from what Brie can surmise by the instructions she was given at the beginning of her contract, she’s also one of the people she’s supposed to be hunting.
In fact, two more people come out of the house, and they both fit the description perfectly. A toothless Orc and a Werewolf, but one who didn’t like to turn. Her entire quarry, right there, right in front of her. If she were someone else, she’d be leaping at the opportunity to seize them and claim her bounty, complete her contract, and leave this whole thing behind. But, beyond the fact that they looked like tough customers, she doesn’t feel obligated to do that at all. In fact, she feels as though it would be wrong, if not completely morally red, to attempt to break up their panicked reunion with the announcement of her aiming to fulfill her contract.
As she briefly turns to look at Meat, she also realizes that she’s been traveling with someone who knows what it’s like to be hunted. Though they’ve only been alive a few weeks, there’s no denying that they’ve had to have been on-edge the entire trip. And they were right to feel that way, as they nearly got themselves, as well as Roxanne and her, in serious trouble just now. Being chased like that, it must not feel very nice. She can tell somewhat by looking at their face. And when looks back at the group of folks on the front porch, something terrible occurs to her.
She’s been an unknowing predator. She’s been the chaser, not the chase-ee, this entire time, and that fills her with a sense of something she feels is unprocessable. She looks at them, discussing what to do in this dire situation, and knows in her heart that she’s been in the wrong for even thinking that taking that job had been a good idea, much less to follow through on it.
And in that moment, she also realizes that Meat has been knocked on the skull with the flat side of a familiar crowbar, sending them into the dirt face-first and entirely unconscious.
“That’s all it takes? Really?” Piper says, stalking up besides Brie. She makes sure to give Meat’s body a hearty kick as she wraps an arm around the Detective’s shoulder. “You ready to do this thing, pal?”
Brie wants to scream, but not only will nothing come out, the others have already noticed the presence of the mercenaries and have hunkered down inside the house, with the exception of Samson, who stands firm on his front porch.
He yells, “I figured they’d send a dog, but they sent me a snake instead! You’d better make this easy, girlie.”
Piper spits out a bit of venom and smiles. “What do you think, you two?” she starts, turning to Jules and Lucille. “Should we make it easy on them?”
“No,” Lucille replies, “but I think this is fucking stupid. What the hell are we doing here, Piper?”
She ignores her comments, “Good. Then I guess it’s about time you two stop dragging me down.” She releases Brie from her grip, and starts to walk over to the two mercenaries, crowbar spinning like a weed whacker’s blade. “Understand that when I say this is nothing personal, I don’t actually mean it, L. It’s totally personal. I’ve been wanting to brain you since we last met. You’ve turned into a real bitch,” she finishes, raising her weapon in a flourish.
Survival instincts begin to fire in Lucille’s brain, but they aren’t enough to protect her from the blow that she attempts to block with a combination of her left arm and shoulder. She definitely hears something crack, and by the time she’s hit the dirt, she can’t even feel it anymore. And there’s hardly any time to scream either, as it’s lights out with a swift boot to the face.
Though her sadistic side tells her to keep going, Piper decides that she might feel bad if she kept wailing on one of her old colleagues after she’d been knocked stupid. So, instead, she turns to Jules, who has fallen on his ass in the process and is clearly in no shape to fight. Something tickles her brain when she starts to approach him like a slasher flick monster, spinning up the crowbar as he tries to scooch himself away in the grass. The only thing that would make it more perfect is if there was a dramatic score, one with shrill strings overlapping a sinister bassline— or, if he were begging. He’s surprisingly silent, just staring up at her in disbelief of what he’s seeing. And that makes it weird.
“If you get up,” she says, frowning. “I’m killing you. Understood, J?” Jules scowls at her, but nods. “Good. Now, Brie,” she starts, turning back to the Detective.
Through the calls from Samson for her to come to the porch, she doesn’t budge a single inch. In a sense, she’s stalled out. It’s all too much for her to handle at the moment, and to be frank, she feels as though she could sink into the center of the world, through the ground where she stands. She jumps a touch when the Snake touches her shoulder again, and feels like nothing but crying when she’s looked in the eyes by her.
“C’mon. You and me. Let’s get this job done so we can go grab some lunch,” Piper says. “You’re on the payroll too, so we’re in this together. Get your gun and let’s do this thing.”
In a moment of clarity, she gazes down at the pocket where her nametag is hidden. She picks it up, shows it to Piper, and throws it into the road. “I will not. I quit.”
Piper frowns, unsurprised and pitying. “I knew you were soft.”
The claw of the crowbar is hooked behind Brie’s ankle and her leg is pulled out from under her, flipping her into the dirt. The wind’s knocked from her lungs, and the Detective sees the claw rise again before it digs itself into her side and hooks around one of her ribs. She can feel the cold metal up against her insides, and when she tries to scream in shock, there’s no air left to fuel it. All that’s left is the pulling, the tugging of an animal trying to lever one of her ribs from its cage.
“Hickory always had a knack for hiring trash. What do you do to help with this shit? Run around and take notes. Follow the trail, but never to the source. Find the evidence, but never the killer. Who the fuck am I kidding, you hardly even did ANY of that,” Piper chides. “So, I think I’m gonna drop you off in a trash bag at her front door. Maybe that’ll teach her a lesson, huh?”
Before Piper can start the dismemberment process, she’s sent flying off her feet with a thundercrack.
“Never seen a more disgustin’ display in all my years,” Samson sighs, ejecting the spent shell from his shotgun. He quickly makes it over to Brie, who is just now catching her breath. “We’re gettin’ you inside. This is gonna hurt a lot, and yer’ gonna start bleedin’ bad, but we can fix ya’. Just don’t move, okay?”
“You fucking dog,” Piper hisses, clutching her still-steaming stomach. Though Blondie’s vest had taken the buckshot, the force alone was enough to make her want to puke up her breakfast. It was both a jabbing, sharp pain in all the areas where the individual pellets had pushed up against her skin, and a dull pain filling in the gaps.
She’s able to get back up, but as she does, she finds herself thrown into the street by another thundercrack, and the pain has multiplied by a magnitude of three. Her combat armour torn to shreds, she writhes on the cobbles of the road, trying to get a grip.
“Shut it, snake!” Samson yells, before turning back to Brie.
The sunlight has become quite hazy in her eyes, and she hardly notices when Samson manages to gently finagle the crowbar out from underneath her rib. From there, time becomes a blur— but she remembers hearing Roxanne’s voice, and she can’t shake the feeling that beyond the pain, she had made the right decision. It’s an oddly warm thing. Or, maybe it’s her own blood.
After getting the Detective inside, under Roxanne’s care and with his emergency kit, Samson realizes that there’s still two people out on his lawn, one of them entirely unconscious. Piper is nowhere to be found, and only moments after tossing it aside the crowbar’s missing too. Ejecting the other spent shell from his gun, he walks back out, and approaches the Vampire.
“You two workin’ with her?” he asks, arms crossed.
“Not anymore,” Jules responds, clutching his side. He offers the Hound a weak smile. “In hindsight, it wasn’t a good idea to begin with. Can I get a hand?”
“You with Shepherd?”
“No sir. We worked security for them before they liquidated that department for people like her.”
Samson frowns. “And now?”
Jules frowns back. “I don’t know.” He gestures over to Lucille, who’s in the process of waking back up. “Ask her. But if I had to bet, we’re done chasing this fuckin’ bounty.”
“You’d better be.”
“Look,” the Vampire says, “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But I also know some of those people inside. Not on good terms, but I’d like to change that, since I’ve realized how stupid I’ve been.” He gestures with his head. “Can you please help me up?” It takes a moment, but the Hound does eventually offer Jules a hand, pulling him to his feet. “Thanks. I appreciate it. And I’m sorry for all this, even if I was being a dumb lackey in it.”
“Don’t mention it. Now, can she stand?” Samson points to Lucille, who is in the process of wiping turf off her face, while nursing a noticeably broken nose.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she says, wobbling as she gets up. “I think I’ve got a concussion.”
“You in the same boat as this guy?” he asks.
“Yeah. We’ve got some apologies to make.”
“Good. We can talk later over some coffee.”
“That sounds nice,” she groans, clutching her nose.
Samson snaps his fingers and gestures to Meat, who is also in the process of getting up. “You come too. Roxanne’s got some explaining to do.”
